


Innocent Faith

by LouRea (MementoVitae)



Series: A Devil Walks the Dragonsphere [1]
Category: Devil May Cry, NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Crossover, Fish out of Water, Fluff, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, In which they're both projecting desires for family onto each other and it's fine, Nier Universe Route C, Platonic Relationships, Post-Devil May Cry 5, Slow Build, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-01-15 16:16:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 45
Words: 98,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18502528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MementoVitae/pseuds/LouRea
Summary: The Tower is fallen and the City Ruins are silent. A man born to vanish and an android made to be sacrificed meet by chance. Together, they explore the aftermath of the 14th Machine War.





	1. On Heaven(?)'s Shore

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place after NieR: Automata's Route C ending and Devil May Cry 5's ending, and as such will contain spoilers. Rating is for violence and nudity later in, some comedic, some not so much. 
> 
> I'll be exploring their bonding process and eventually all the ways their bond is highly cathartic for both of them, while deep diving into the nier universe's lore. 
> 
> First couple chapters will be a little on the short side as I wind up. I hope you enjoy and please feel free to comment--I love getting chatty about lore!

V opened his eyes to sullen clouds and ashen rays of light. The scent of smoke and burnt metal tingled in his nose, chased by the slightly more pleasant scent of damp grass. He blinked slowly. The sound of waves rolling in was all around him, as if he were afloat in a strange dream. It was only when the chill began to seep in through the back of his coat that he fully realized he was awake again.

He sat up. Looked at his tattoo-covered hands. Patted them over his thin chest. Felt the shape of his face. He was himself—his human self—again.

He clenched his eyes against the gray light, and tried to think. He remembered Urizen laying almost dead, the final blow, their re-joining, and then... The top of the Qliphoth. Nero. Travelling down to hell with Dante. Maybe they would find their way back, maybe they wouldn't. Either way, the Qliphoth was gone.

The twitch of a smile touched V's lips. Somewhere, he and his brother were together, reclaiming something that had been lost in their uniquely stubborn way.

So where was this then?

The glint of his cane greeted him as he opened his eyes. He looked again at his hands. They were smooth. No cracks or any sign of deterioration at all. He still leaned heavily on the cane to stand, but it no longer required him to near-exhaust his will on pushing through pain.

"I take it by your uncanny silence," he murmured, extending his arm. "That you have nothing to relay?"

Griffon fluttered down and gingerly took the offered perch. "Not a lot about the situation that makes sense, V. I'm a little lost for words."

"How long has it been?"

"Can't say, I wasn't exactly expecting to return from the dead."

V glanced aside at his familiar. Vergil had never given any thought to the fates of the three, and so neither had he. Until this moment.

"You remember anything?" Griffon asked as if picking up on V's thoughts. "We're already back, I might as well know if we died for shit all."

"...Vergil didn't remember," he answered, not unkindly.

"Eh, I'll take it." He took off, flapping busily to stay at eye level with V. "Wherever we're at, I'm feelin' good about being not dead again, so let's focus on keeping that going. There's not a demon in sight, but the shore's littered with bodies and we might be in a liiittle bit over our heads—check out the smoke factory."

V followed Griffon's gaze out to sea. Between the sunken skeletons of skyscrapers, a many-armed behemoth rose from the water. Flames flickered like distant stars from within its frame, and sighed black smoke into the sky.

An eye cast away from the waters found the shore just as baffling. Skyscrapers covered in massive trees stretched up behind him. There were bodies, as Griffon said. Some were clad in black, some were naked and so charred that their skin was peeled back. Only there was no flesh beneath. Just bundles of cables in a mimicry of muscle and milky white shells in place of bone. All around were destroyed scraps and dismantled shape. Gears, bolts, and screws scattered across the grass like blood on the floor of an abattoir.

V turned inland, determined to be away from there while the calm persisted.

"Hey!" Griffon called, sailing after him. "You're just gonna leave?" 

He glanced over his shoulder and briefly took in the alien scenery again. "A battle happened here involving neither humans nor devils. I'd rather we stay as outsiders."

"Whoa whoa, wait—but what if there's a clue here? Y'know, where we are, why we're here?"

V flexed his fingers experimentally around his cane and took off at a confident stride. "Then we'll return. It seems we have been afforded the luxury of time."


	2. [C]ynical

Pod 153 and 042 sat on either side of 9S atop a half-crumbled spire where he sprawled like an abandoned toy. After his defeat, he eventually underwent a successful reboot, free of the logic virus and completely disconnected from the machine network. However, the seeming defeat of the N2 and the confirmation of A2's death had led to a different kind of abnormality in his mental state. Despite their warnings, he had abandoned his weapon and supplies in the forest. He behaved as though the hostile knight machines weren't there in spite of a fully functioning visual field. Eventually, he meandered back to the ruins to a high peak where he was unlikely to be found, and sat. 

They had been there ever since. 

A strange shadow passed over them. High above, a blue eagle carried a slender shape through the sky. Male model. Black hair. No visor. Covered in...tattoos.

"BLACK BOX ACTIVITY DETECTED," Pod 153 announced. She floated back into position over 9S' shoulder with a friendly whir. "GOOD MORNING, 9S."

The fingers on the hand that 9S still had twitched and jerked. Significant motor delay had set in, and he found it difficult just to raise his head and keep the strange sight in his visual field.

"Analyze target," he croaked in a voice half-rusted by disuse.

"REPORT:" replied Pod 042. "NO BLACK BOX SIGNAL DETECTED."

"Another humanoid machine...?"

"NEGATIVE."

"So...a resistance android?"

"UNKNOWN. NO RECORD OF MATCHING MODEL TYPE."

It wouldn't have been the first time something weird had appeared. Emil was out there, after all. Sometimes 9S still heard him singing and crashing into things out in the ruins. But this was different. This looked like an android.

Only there was no way one that big could be carried off by a bird.

After a laborious climb, 9S managed to get back on his feet. "Status report."

"AFFIRMATIVE. 9S ENTERED SEMI-SUSPENDED STATE 947 HOURS AGO. REPEATED DIAGNOSTICS FOUND NO ERRORS DESPITE ABNORMAL BLACK BOX SIGNAL. "

"Systems report."

"NCFS, FFCS, AND HACKING CAPABILITIES OPERATIONAL. LOGIC VIRUS INFECTION STATUS: CLEAR. MINOR DETERIORATION IN PROCESSING SPEEDS FOR ALL SYSTEMS DETECTED. LEFT FOREARM REMAINS DAMAGED. PROPOSAL: UNIT 9S SHOULD UNDERGO MAINTENANCE."

"Later." He tottered toward the cusp of the spire, keeping his eyes on the trajectory of the unknown android. "I don't want to lose him."

"PROPOSAL: UNIT 9S SHOULD STATE HIS INTENTIONS."

9S paused. He stared blankly down at the few machines that milled about in the white rubble of the fallen tower. The destruction of the tower seemed to have cleaned out their network entirely. They might obey their most basic function and return to killing androids, or they might develop their own ways of thinking. He didn't know. He didn't care.

Not one of them was more or less meaningless than him. Whether they thought or felt or loved or hated no longer mattered. They would never learn. They could never learn. 

And neither could he.

"I have to know what it is," he answered. Words which might have once been filled with his boundless love for new information, but were now just dull, resigned echoes. "That's how I was made."


	3. Begin Again

"Woohoo, top floor!"

V dropped from Griffon's talons and landed gracefully on the roof of the highrise. He regarded his familiar's continued flight beyond into the open sky with genuine pleasure. His demonic power as he recalled it would have left Griffon struggling to carry him to the peak of a structure this high.

"I feel like a new demon," Griffon bragged from above. "Hey, you sure you don't wanna try for that other rooftop?"

"Another time."

He strolled toward the lone dining table that inhabited the otherwise empty roof. Under a thick coat of dust, the surface was smooth and unweathered. Two empty candelabra stood, while a third had been knocked to the ground aside a fallen chair. A chair at the opposite side of the table stood empty. Before it sat abandoned bible, and a single apple so rotted it was practically dust.

V ran his fingers over the ancient but familiar text. "Not so far from home, then..."

He turned the chair with a flick of his cane and eased into it. He had come for the vantage point, but now that he had reached his goal, he considered the view without a sense of urgency. It was, after all, the same sight it had been on the way up.

Vast white stones littered the streets in piles that grew larger and closer together toward their epicenter, where they cluttered the mouth of a massive crater. There was a curious geometry to some of the remains. A hint of curvature and carefully carved angles that suggested whatever they had once been was as beautiful as it was towering. Even from on high, the stones were pure, almost scathingly white. A metal colossus sat half buried at one corner of the crater. As on the shore, there were parts and odds and ends and black-clad bodies in the shape of young women.

The crumbled cityscape had gone unlived in so long that emptiness radiated like a physical force from every sunwashed stone and silent shadow. Yet the remains spoke of war. One from which the smoke had not even begun to clear.

A gentle wind blew over V, and he breathed as deeply as his body would allow. In spite of the dire conclusion and being no closer to understanding his situation, a grin had made its home on his lips.

He wasn't dying. All else being uncertain, that much was true. Griffon could feel it, and though V was careful to keep a more level head about it, so could he. From some unknown source flowed an intoxicating current of vitality that he wasn't certain he could truly contain. He was still human--fragile and a bit too thin for his own good, but he coursed with more power than he knew what to do with.

That would prove temporary, he imagined. Sooner or later, one side or the other of the conflict evident in the ruins would notice his presence and seek him out.

A metallic rattle distracted him from his thoughts. He stilled. It happened again, and his eyes scanned the far edge of the rooftop until they settled on the curve of a ladder bolted to the side of the building.

"Speak of the devil," he murmured. 

Silently, he recalled Griffon and leaned patiently back into his seat. He was quite curious who, or perhaps more appropriately 'what', had followed him. If they were peaceful, perhaps he could convince them to give him information. If they weren't, he would know the shape of his new enemy.

He was already in the perfect location to dispose of them without drawing any further attention. 

* * *

Perhaps the pods had been right. Climbing the ladder one-armed was far more of a challenge than 9S had initially expected. At this rate he'd be lucky if the mysterious android was even still up there. Several times he considered hooking onto pod and just going back down, but by the time he was half-way there he was no longer really thinking. He doggedly pulled himself up by his good arm over and over, until the routine sank in so deep he no longer paid attention to how close he even was to his destination. It came as a shock when he pulled himself up and found himself tumbling over the last rung. He collapsed forward head over heel, and landed gracelessly on his back.

A series of slow claps congratulated him from across the roof.

9S scrambled to his feet. The model was still there. He sat cross legged, smiling as he returned his hands to the cane in his lap.

“Are you—” He stood straight and called out louder. “Are you a resistance member?

V’s he lifted his chin. “Who asks?”

9S’ fist tightened. There was a look about this guy—an aloof but self-satisfied intellect that churned up sickly memories of Adam. But he wasn’t a machine. And he wasn’t attacking.

“9S. YoRHa Unit 9S.”

“YoRHa…” V repeated slowly, searching for something recognizable about the word and finding nothing. The boy’s clothing matched the style of what few bodies still had them, but there was an overwhelming familiarity to the situation. Young man, white hair, missing an arm, getting into places he probably shouldn’t be... He pressed the head of his cane against his lips. “I take it the bodies by the sea are also YoRHa.”

“You’re not a resistance member,” 9S said tensely. “Are you?”

“I imagine you knew the answer to that before you pursued, otherwise…” He pointed his cane at the boy’s damaged arm. “You would not have come so far in such a state.”

9S dropped into a ready stance, but V laughed and rose to his feet. “Do not rush toward death, little lamb.” He tilted his head at the ruins around them. “I am a stranger in a strange land. My interest is only in finding more familiar surroundings.”

“This sector hasn’t been in contact with any others. Not in a long time.” There hadn’t been any outside contact since Grun’s attack, in fact. 9S relaxed. If there was a stranger talking about the flooded city, it only made sense he might have come from that skirmish. “You must have survived the EMP attack somehow. Do you remember your name?”

The answer came quick and surprisingly easy given his earlier evasiveness. “V.”

“Doesn’t sound like any model type I’ve ever heard of... I think your memory might be damaged. I can take a look and repair you.”

“That won’t be necessary. I think you’ll find you’re not qualified to 'repair' me.”

It was starting to irritate 9S the way V kept smiling. Like he knew something 9S didn’t. He looked either run down or poorly built, but he had casually suggested he could kill 9S, and 9S didn’t think that was a bluff. The cane wasn’t sharpened to battle standard, but V kept it at the ready and 9S couldn’t get a read on what it was made of. His expression was unconcerned, but his eyes stayed sharp and attentive on 9S’ movements. Maybe he was a specialty unit…but did the Resistance have the resources to build something like him?

“I’d like a better look anyway, if you don’t mind.” He held his hands up and began to inch closer. He didn’t have a weapon, so if he could just hack in and figure out this guy’s deal before his guard was up— “I’m not going to hurt you.”

V’s smile only widened. “I promise, you won’t.”

As soon as he was in range, 9S hacked in. Nothing happened.

He tilted his head to the side and whispered urgently. “ _I thought hacking was online!”_

“AFFIRMATIVE,” answered Pod 153 at the same volume as ever, earning a flinch from 9S. “HACKING FUNCTIONALITY IS FULLY OPERATIONAL.”

9S glanced at V, but he was covering his mouth in a polite attempt to hide his amusement. 9S felt his temperature starting to rise. He was being laughed at! “Why can’t I get in?” he demanded hotly.

“UNIT V HAS NO SYSTEMS.”

“What? Every android has to at least have an operating system!”

“AFFIRMATIVE. OS CHIP IS ESSENTIAL TO ANDROID FUNCTIONALITY.”

“So how is that possible?!”

“TARGET IS AN ORGANIC LIFEFORM.”


	4. Design Flaw

**Organic.**

The simple descriptor shot through the weeks of deep fog clouding 9S’ mind and burned them away like a comet burning away clouds. The weight of every character of the knowledge he had gained since the destruction of YoRHa simultaneously lifted from his shoulders and crushed him anew in breath-stealing waves. His legs unceremoniously gave way and dropped him to the concrete. Through the tightness in his chest, he released a single, wavering whisper.

“He's... a human...?”

"ANALYSIS: LIKELIHOOD OF HUMAN SURVIVAL THROUGH ALL PREVIOUS MACHINE WARS AND FAILURE OF GESTALT PROJECT: 0%"

"Right...It's impossible."

"NEGATIVE. SUBJECT COMPOSITION 100% MATCH TO HUMAN RECORDS."

Another wave of giddiness and devastating pressure clashed inside 9S. He could have screamed at the pods for jerking him around like that, but only managed an animal cackle as his thoughts grew muddy and difficult to parse. They were right. It was impossible, but also undeniable: A human had appeared.

The red girls themselves could not have come up with a crueler truth to rub in his face. Why _now_? Why only after he had been through the Tower? Why only after YoRHa was destroyed?

9S might have drowned in the possibilities of how differently it all could have gone, if not for his lingering irritation at V’s careless smile. It grew until it was a white-hot star inside of his body that threatened to melt him from within. How could V stand there like nothing he had seen had anything to do with him? It had _everything_ to do with him. He was all there was; he was the single reason for everything that had happened in the last 10,000 years, but he didn’t know or care. He didn’t have the slightest idea.

If 9S hadn't thrown away his weapons, he would gladly have run himself through.

V was there, and no matter how much 9S might hate him, he longed for him in equal measure. Only after he had no one left did the thing that could have prevented it all appear. Lucky him, it was also one thing that could make him want to go on. He hated it--himself, the programming that made him this way--with far greater intensity than he could have ever managed for V. It was easier to.

The machine network had come to crave humanity. It imitated them, even in their failures, over and over again, just to be closer to them. The androids were built in humanity's image, ready to care for them and, failing that, prepared to die in their name. They craved humanity too. So much that they had created YoRHa androids and purposefully designed them to die rather than communally cope with humanity's extinction. 

By only existing, V undid the lie. By only existing, V gave meaning to everything, even though it was designed to be pointless. By only existing, V gave 9S perfect insight as to why his creators made YoRHa.

Not that he wouldn't still kill every single one of them if given half a chance.

The tightness in his chest cleared, and he assessed himself with fresh perspective. Neglect had left him damaged and filthy. His systems were in a disgraceful state of disrepair. Popola and Devola had probably not survived, but he had the clarity for internal maintenance and the resistance to help him with the external. He needed to get as close to optimal function as he could.

"I..." he muttered out breathlessly. "I have to go."

The sharp metallic clink of the cane struck down beside 9S’ good hand. He had no idea when V had closed in, but he stood over 9S with an almost exasperated expression. "That would be unwise."

9S’ head felt hot, his body too small, as though he were going to burst out of it. What he initially mistook for cheap design was just a bent back, stubble, and the shadows of a sternum on an underweight body.  A human, a real human he could have reached out and touched. He covered his mouth to hold in either a laugh or a scream or a sob, and could not guess which.

"ALERT: MULTIPLE  MALFUNCTIONS IN PROCESSING DETECTED. WARNING: SUBJECT V MAY SUSTAIN DAMAGE DUE TO INTERNAL COMBUSTION AT THIS PROXIMITY."

V's eyebrows raised and he took a cautious hop-step back. "Is he about to self-destruct?"

"No!" 9S blurted, his voice hitching and distorting. "Nobody's destructing or combusting! But there’s noise in my—I’m unstable and I don't want to—" He gritted his teeth. "I want to help you. But I need maintenance. I _need_ to go.”

"If that's true, you'll be glad to give me a parting gift. Information, as I asked."

"Pod 153, initiate full data transfer."

"NEGATIVE. TARGET IS AN ORGANIC--"

9S ground his fist into his forehead and groaned. "Yeah, yeah, I got it! Pod 042, I order you to remain with V and provide him any and all information he requires."

"AFFIRMATIVE." 

V’s eyes moved from Pod 042, now drifting peaceably just outside of arm's reach, to 9S, to Pod 153. 9S took it as a small victory that he was no longer smiling as he planted his cane and shrugged toward the edge of the rooftop.

"Little lamb," V called after him as he stumbled away. "Should another find their way here, expect to find them in pieces."

9S looked back from the ledge, panting as he struggled to keep himself under control. Other androids hadn't crossed his mind. Should he tell someone? Should he tell anyone? He turned away to hide his eyes as a flicker of jealousy coursed through him.

"I think that's a good idea."

Hopefully he could get a replacement visor somewhere. It might finally be time to take that tired rule about emotions a little more seriously.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're over the hump.  
> I think 9S went through all the stages of grief in this chapter, and while I don't think I have to explain why, I admit it was as heavy to write as probably was for you guys to read. 
> 
> Next one will be significantly more light-hearted as V (and Griffon) get to know Deadpan King Pod 042.


	5. Known Unknown

V tapped his cane against his chin and watched the small black shape of 9S drift down toward the street on the speck of his remaining pod. The moment he landed, he took off at a run beyond what a human could have managed and quickly vanished beyond V's sight.

He paced back to the empty chair and considered the city for several silent minutes. The chatty pods had given new context to the decayed skyline and palpable emptiness. He didn't know where he was, but it no longer mattered in the face of what had happened. 9S had provided almost no actual information, but his near-allergic reaction to V's humanity was enlightening in other regards.

His gaze shifted up to the pod that had been left behind for him. Though it had no face, it looked perfectly content to quietly idle until addressed.

It wasn't an unpleasant change of pace. "Pod 042, was it?"

"AFFIRMATIVE."

"Where is the boy going?"

"HYPOTHESIS: UNIT 9S WILL RETURN TO LOCAL RESISTANCE CAMP FOR MAINTENANCE AND LIKELY RETRIEVE WEAPONS TO MAXIMIZE COMBAT FUNCTIONALITY."

"Combat?" V mused. "He didn't seem up to the challenge."

In a flurry of ink and shadow, Griffon took shape and fluttered busily around V. "Is _that_ why you didn't call me? You don't usually get in close right away, so I thought you were finally gonna get your hands dirty and skewer that boy-bot but you went easy on him!"

"QUERY:" the pod announced. "WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THE AVIAN LIFEFORM?"

"As Griffon is to me," V answered with an impish smile toward his feathered familiar. "So are you to 9S."

"UNDERSTOOD. GREETINGS, SUPPORT UNIT GRIFFON."

"Cram the support unit stuff," Griffon cawed. "I'm more sophisticated than some floating box. I got charm and personality and a whole lotta power!"

The orange antennae atop the pod's head spun slowly, almost as if it were in thought. Instead of responding, it drifted in closer to V.

"PROPOSAL: SUBJECT V SHOULD PROVIDE INFORMATION ABOUT HIMSELF."

"Don't ignore me, soda can." Griffon snagged the pod by one of its arms and dragged it backward. "I'm sure V's the most interestin' thing in the world in a place where everybody's made of metal, but he's on the fragile side; give him some space, eh?"

"WARNING: SELF-DEFENSE SYSTEM ACTIVATED."

Bullets pelted Griffon's tail and he released Pod 042 with an ear-splitting squawk. "You little--! You shot me!"

"AFFIRMATIVE. PODS ARE PROGRAMMED TO PRIORITIZE SELF-PRESERVATION WHEN TARGETED."

"Yeah well, your sensor's twitchy." Sparks leapt over Griffon's feathers. "Lemme show you what real targeting looks like."

"Enough," V commanded, pressing Griffon back until he gave in with a pronounced 'hmph'. "There's no need for you to know anything about us, Pod."

"AFFIRMATIVE. HOWEVER, POTENTIALLY RELEVANT ARCHIVES REPRESENT APPROXIMATELY 14,934 HOURS OF READING IN ADDITION TO 26,282 HOURS OF FOOTAGE SINCE THIS POD UNIT'S ROLL-OUT DATE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION WOULD ALLOW A TAILORED RESPONSE TO SUBJECT V'S INFORMATION REQUEST."

"Holy _shit_ ," Griffon whispered.

V pursed his lips in silent agreement. He had time, but not that kind of time. "When exactly was your roll-out?"

"7 JANUARY 11942, 5:13AM."

His eyes glazed over. His lips numbly worked the words as though that would make them different. "Eleven...thousand. Nine hundred... And forty-two."

He sucked in a slow, steadying breath and pressed his bony fingers to his temples. "And what is today?"

"19 SEPTEMBER 11945, 2:33 PM."

The frown already making it's home on his face deepened to a grimace. The gap between his location and his destination was not a gap--it was an abyss. He could not imagine a way back any more than he could imagine how he had crossed over in the first place. It felt like all the vitality he had gained was siphoned away, leaving him as weak as a newborn. He had time, but in exchange he had no plan, and no idea where to begin. With multiple millennia in the way, he was no longer sure he even had a goal.

Griffon came to rest on the dusty table and couldn't help but fill V's stunned silence with his own nervous chatter. "Uhh, I'll be honest, I'd rather be dealin' with Urizen again. At least that made sense. This isn't Hell or some other weird dimension hop courtesy of the Yamato, it's the fuckin future! Is Vergil even still alive?!"

V's face twitched, and he shot Griffon a sharp look. Of course Vergil wasn't alive after so much time, but to draw attention to was to call into question the details of V's own presence. Now wasn't the time.

"We're a long way from home," V explained with the tight composure of a man plunged too deep into absurdity to cope without it. "I don't suppose time travel is alive and well here?"

"NEGATIVE."

"Of course." He pulled his fingers through his hair and hissed a sigh. " _Father O Father what do we here, in this land of unbelief and fear.._."  
  
The familiarity of the words grounded him, at least enough to plant his cane and sit upright. There was no obvious way back, just as it wasn't obvious how he'd arrived there to begin with. He had strength, but until he knew where his efforts should be directed, it couldn't serve him. All he had to work with was time.

Time and perhaps a very different kind of power, if there were others who would respond to him as 9S had.

"Pod 042, give me the briefest possible summary of what happened between humanity's decline and now."

"AFFIRMATIVE." The pod's shell opened and a projection little bigger than the page of a book appeared before V. After a few seconds, it filled with a series of texts.

"GESTALT REPORTS 1 THROUGH 11, PROJECT YORHA SERVER RECORD, AND RECENTLY COMPILED MACHINE RESEARCH REPORT PREPARED."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're over the other hump, and officially past the set up~!  
> Next chapter: DIY android repair, survivor's guilt, and concerns about human dietary needs.
> 
> This chapter's William Blake quote comes from the poem "The Land of Dreams"


	6. [E]rratic

"TAMPERING WITH ACCESS POINT MAY INCUR PUNISHMENT."

The rusted vending machine facade gave an appropriately ancient creak as it stuttered. Hacking had gotten 9S past the defense system, but it was proving to be a lot more protective of the spare parts deeper inside.

"Does anyone actually have the authority to punish me?"

"CHAIN OF COMMAND UNCLEAR. HOWEVER, RESISTANCE MEMBER JACKASS WHO RESTORED THIS AREA'S TRANSPORT SYSTEM HAS SHOWN UNPREDICTABLE BEHAVIOR IN THE PAST."

"That's...actually a good point." He paused to assess where in the transport's systems he needed to go. Getting accustomed to destroying machines by hacking them had its perks, but this needed a more delicate touch. He didn't want to think about what Jackass would do to him if he blew up a transporter.

"If I can just convince it that there's already a scanner model in-coming..."

A hiss of steam rewarded him, and he snapped out of hacking space. The access point hummed quietly. Barring the peek of light and few muffled noises from inside, it appeared to not be doing anything at all.

1.907 seconds, 9S counted while he waited. Even accounting for the drop in his processing speed, that was an embarrassing time. There weren't many machines around to practice on, but he imagined that wouldn't be the case when it came time to retrieve his weapon.

The access point opened. 9S froze.

When he tried to recall most of what happened after the Bunker fell, it felt hot. All rush and red, like what he imagined the E-Drug felt like when used by combat models. The brand new 9S model freshly assembled inside the access point gave him the opposite feeling—like ice had just been poured into his wiring.

Without a consciousness transfer, the body was only that. It would never wake up. The expression was blank. Peaceful. It fell readily into his arms as soon as he touched it, and the access point closed behind it with an impersonal huff.

In the shadowed nook between the access point and the ancient concrete it was backed against, 9S unbuttoned his damaged coat. He kicked off his worn and filthy boots and shuffled out of his shorts. He even peeled off his socks. The replacements he pulled from his copy smelled faintly of warm metal.

"Hey, did V look kind of sick to you?" he asked casually.

"NO SYMPTOMS OF COMMON HUMAN ILLNESSES WERE DETECTED. HOWEVER, ANALYSIS SUGGESTS SUBJECT V IS BELOW AVERAGE WEIGHT ADJUSTING FOR SEX AND HEIGHT."

The arm snapped clean at the joint and sizzled as he attached it. Though he grimaced, he did not cry out.

Now the model looked more like him. He was thankful that Pod 153 didn't ask why when he replaced the blank model’s clothes with his old, dirty uniform. Nor did it comment when 9S flexed his new fingers and closed his hands around the model's neck.  
It was only an empty shell. It wasn’t him.

He took the blindfold instead. As soon as it was tied, his shoulders settled and he busily searched around for wildlife. "You think he could manage a boar on his own?"

"INQUIRY UNCLEAR."

"Well, if V's underweight it means he wasn't getting enough to eat right? You think he's strong enough to take down a boar?” He lifted the body up over his back with a grunt. “Or maybe get that bird he was flying on to do it?"

"UNKNOWN. …QUERY: WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF CARRYING THE DUPLICATE MODEL?"

"Hm? Oh, this? I might need more parts and I don't want to tamper with the access points again if I can avoid it. I’ll hide it somewhere on the way."

* * *

 

He was glad for his freshened appearance when he arrived at the Resistance Camp. Turned heads and wide-eyed gazes followed him from the moment he stepped into the light, and though the attention wasn't hostile, he slowed to a stop by the flower bed.

"If you've got time to gawk, you've got time to move ass," an abrasive voice crowed.

9S tensed as a familiar face strode out from under a tent with Anemone in tow. "H..Hi Jackass."

She waved. Whether it was as a greeting or a dismissal was difficult to say as she was busily carrying tools to one of the camp's trucks.

"Do you...want some help?"

She raised a brow. "You're a real workaholic, huh?" She tossed her cargo in the carriage with no regard for order or even the integrity of the materials. "You wanna help me, grab a shovel and see what else you can find in all that tower rubble."

"Erm... Probably not a good idea. I'm actually here for repairs."

"Then what'd you even ask for?!" She hoisted herself into the driver's seat. "I've got more data than I know what to do with and I bet there's more. Take a break, squirt."

The engine revved, and she drove soberly out of camp. 9S listened curiously. She didn't strike him as the careful driver type, and as soon as she cleared the building, he heard the screech he had expected.

Anemone smiled in her warm but weary way. "It's good to see you're well."

She placed a hand at his back before he could respond and ushered him toward the infirmary area. The tarps were still burned and filled with holes, but the cots had been replaced.

"You've been through a lot," she said, soft enough for only him to hear. "I'm sorry...and thank you."

The words tasted like acid, but he forced himself to be honest with her. "I didn't destroy the Tower. A2, at the top she..."

"It wouldn't have opened without you," she interrupted sternly but politely, and gestured for him to lie down. "Whatever you need, don't hesitate to ask."

"Yeah..." he mumbled lamely. The misplaced gratitude was one thing, but the insistent kindness was hard for him to stomach. "Are you... treating me like this because you saw the YoRHa data...?"

"I'm extending an arm to a fellow soldier in need," she said without batting an eye. "You have my respect. Never my pity."

"Sorry..."

“It’s fine. I was worried you might…” Her lips pressed together, and she held in whatever she meant to say. Instead, she squeezed his shoulder reassuringly and left him to his repair. "I hope you'll live on, 9S."

He watched her go with a bitter smile. She had a very familiar way of saying a lot by saying very little. Only with Anemone it felt intentional rather than sweetly clumsy.

"Initiate Maintenance Mode."

"AFFIRMATIVE."

* * *

The hacking space is normal. White walls with no sign of viral activity. Motor, aural, and visual systems lay before 9S in neat rows. He checks each impersonally but with uncharacteristic diligence. Maintenance will be important from here on out, and he can’t afford to treat it like a tedious chore. The decay in his processing speed is not primarily hardware related, but a fluid change-out will do him good. The external maintenance process of his pod will take care of that.

He delves deeper, until he arrives at his memory area.

It feels small. He had not realized just how accustomed he became to the machine network and its vast systems all interconnected to the point of near-infinity.  The curious, analytic part of him whispers that technically that was his home network, given the nature of the black box.

He ignores the thought and delves deeper still.

Unprocessed memories clutter the core of his personality data. He can barely make out the fractured white shape through the noise. It is collapsed inward on itself and stands only in the same sense that many ruined structures in the city still stand. There is nothing he can do about it. No deeper hack, no magic fix.

Massive but unintelligible pieces of his time in the tower float by him, blotted with phantom shades of black where the logic virus had muted or magnified his emotions. He forces them into order while never looking directly at them. They are ugly and painful to the touch, but they are his memories. Proper processing will take time, but for now it's fine so long as they aren't in his way.

The memory of V is the last. It is silent save for V's voice and the click of his cane, all other aural information irrelevant. Opposing tingles of fear and warmth race through 9S and again he is overcome with an unbearable longing for humanity. He leaves the unprocessed memory adrift.

"Humans need a lot of water too right?” he asks the void, knowing the pod can hear. This is likely the only way they can discuss V in camp at all without being overheard.

“AFFIRMATIVE.”

"Is V going to be able to drink from any of the local streams?"

"HYPOTHESIS: MACHINE FISH IN LOCAL WATER SUPPLY MAY POSE A HEALTH RISK."

"Hmm… There's none at the oasis. We probably can't take V there through that huge sandstorm though...”

He trails off as he becomes aware of additional noise. There are no more unprocessed memories. The noise emanates from the jumbled heap of his personality data. As he closes in, one voice becomes clear. It is low, feminine. Infuriatingly familiar--and painfully tender.

_"Don't worry...I'll take care of everything."_

* * *

 

9S jolted awake into a motionless body.

"ALERT: MAINTENANCE MODE STILL ACTIVE."

"What was that?" he demanded over their connection. "I heard... A2."

"...AFFIRMATIVE."

"Why?!"

"HYPOTHESIS: MEMORY CONVERGENCE DUE TO COMBAT HACKING OF YORHA UNIT A2 AND SUBSEQUENT CURATIVE HACKING OF UNIT 9S."

"So that noise was...her memories?"

"UNKNOWN. BOTH UNITS WERE ACTIVE WITHIN THE MACHINE NETWORK DURING THE FINAL EXCHANGE."

"Let me up, let me up right now!"

"SUSPENDING MAINTENANCE MODE."

He shot up and swung his legs over the side of the cot. The heated pulse in his chest slowly died down only to be replaced by shivers in his arms. Eventually he realized his over-tight grip on the frame and rubbed at his wrists.

"Were you almost done?" he asked feebly.

"MAINTENANCE 89% COMPLETE.”

Eleven percent wasn’t the end of the world... but he couldn’t risk it. He dropped back to the cot with an exaggerated sigh. “Fine, fine… Resume maintenance mode.”

He entertained himself by looking through the pod’s index of old world data. Medicine, fashion, biology… There was a lot to learn, and more to do.

“Mark the location of my weapons on the map,” he ordered. More energetically, he added. “And do a scan for safe-to-use containers. Maybe I can just go get water for him. Or would that be weird? Will he think I’m treating him like a baby?”

“ALERT: UNIT 9S’ CONVERSATION PATTERNS ARE BECOMING ERRATIC.”

“Are not! Or…okay, I guess, I just…don’t want to upset him. We got off to a bad start and I wanna make a good impression. Come on, Pod, help me out.”

“ANALYSIS: OLD WORLD DATA SUGGESTS IT WAS A COMMON AND SOCIALLY BENEFICIAL CUSTOM TO WELCOME A NEW MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY WITH PREPARED FOODS.”

“I guess that’s not all that different from all the materials we got when we first came here… Alright! After we pick up my stuff, let’s look for one of those rare boars. And water from the oasis. Maybe we can even find some of those eagle eggs!"

He scarcely noticed the 11% pass.


	7. Selfhood's Joy

V paced an idle, irregular route around the roof. In front of him, the pod drifted with screen still up and operational even though he was no longer reading. He had already absorbed the details of YoRHa, the recent summary of the conflict, and, most interestingly, the Gestalt reports.

Humans separating their souls from their bodies wasn’t a novel concept. Not given his own birth. It interested him more that they had managed it on a mass scale, and more still that they had done it to escape a disease brought to them by some sort of extra-dimensional event. To suddenly exist in another dimension, even one similar enough to his own to contain a bible, was much easier for him to believe than that he alone had been brought thousands of years into the future. It was the way the report spoke about the decade between 2004 and 2014. His memory--Vergil's memory--from that time was spotty and blood-stained, but surely he would have taken note of humans turning into salt.

Or maybe he wouldn't have.

The edge of confusion had fallen away over the long hours, and left peace that bordered on boredom in its place. Similarly, V had grown weary of considering his elsewhere self. Without the shadow of death, the threat of Urizen, or his duty to make right his own foolish choices, what reason was there to think or act with Vergil in mind?

A shape beneath the table caught his eye. Glasses. Sleek, black and, upon retrieval, not actually corrective. They were surprisingly clean, and he sat them on the bridge of his nose.

"REPORT: TEXT SIZE CAN BE ALTERED AS NECESSARY TO ACCOMMODATE VISUAL DEFECTS."

"I'm sure it can," said V with a faint chuckle. "But I'm merely enjoying my own good mood."

He sat the glasses back down and looked up to the shifting rays coming through the thinning clouds. "What more can you tell me about maso?"

"MASO-RELATED RESEARCH WAS HIGHLY CLASSIFIED." The screen retracted, and the pod efficiently clicked back into a simple box shape. "DATA IS LIMITED."

"The research doesn't interest me. I wish to know if it still exists."

The silent seconds stretched, and the stretch became a yawn, and the yawn became a vast and empty pit, but V remained patient. He had come to learn that the amount of time it took to fulfill a data request reflected the data’s obscurity.

"MASO SOURCED FROM 'DRAGON' LIKELY STILL ATMOSPHERICALLY PRESENT. CORRUPT MASO FROM SOURCED FROM 'GIANT' DESTROYED SOMETIME DURING THE 33RD CENTURY. PROBABILITY OF SUBJECT V CONTRACTING WHITE CHLORINATION SYNDROME: 0%. END REPORT."

He began to laugh, gently at first, but the longer he went on, the more openly it came. He hooked the head of his cane around the pod and pulled it close enough to take its tiny alloy fingers in hand. The pod's antennae stood, but it went along with the blithe outburst and allowed itself to be pulled along in relaxed twirls.

Maso particles were the catalyst that set off everything that had happened in this world. For all the trouble it caused, humans had still managed to make use of it. It fueled their Gestalt Project, it fueled the development of their androids, of certain pod programs; it even fueled weapons development that Pod had not been able to expand on.

V suspected it was also fueling him.

Wouldn't that be a just reward? Expelled along with Vergil's nightmares, born from the act of being cast off, weak and intended for death so that there would be nothing but power left. And not only had he re-united, not only had he righted his wrong, but then he was transported to a place where he might taste what it meant to thrive. As _himself_. 

Through some whim of serendipity, V got to have that which Vergil chased but never tasted: Triumph.

"CONFIRMATION REQUEST: DANCING?"

" 'Affirmative'." He gently spun the pod round before releasing it into the air, where it continued to turn on its own.

"REPORT: ENJOYABLE."

"Gross, " Griffon interrupted, yawning noisily from his perch atop the table. "Can we get on with whatever needs getting on with, preferably without you two getting it on? I'd love to watch you flirt, really, it's fascinating, but I would love it a lot more if we had a plan. You have a plan after all that, don't you?"

" _Think in the morning, act at noon_. Best we settle for the oncoming night and make decisions tomorrow."

"NEGATIVE. DUE TO PLANETARY TIDAL LOCK, THIS SECTOR NO LONGER EXPERIENCES NIGHT CYCLES."

V shared a blank look with Griffon, who was quick to shuffle around, go back to sleep, and leave V to figure it out by himself. He shrugged and slung his cane over his shoulder.

"Alright... Let's start from the top."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...How'd that first chapter of Visions of V treat everyone?


	8. Little Clod of Clay

9S ascended the ladder in high spirits and high leaps. Being fully operational felt great. Knowing he would see V again soon felt great. His pack was heavy with boar meat, he had found a nice bottle to hold water in, and his average hacking time for simple machines was back down to .448 seconds. Still rusty by his own standards, but within acceptable time.

He was going to see a human!

The top floor felt like it took forever to reach, and yet arrived far too soon. His head was overflowing with things to say and his chest was full of nervous fluctuations as he trotted into the daylight. V was leaning on his cane with his back to 9S, distracted by the steady drone of Pod 042’s voice.

"REPORT: UNIT 9S AND POD 153 HAVE RETURNED."

He hadn't expected Pod 153 to announce him like that, and quickly made the effort to look friendly.

"Hey there boy-bot,” said Griffon

9S’ smile faltered. “Is that bird _talking_?”

“AFFIRMATIVE,” said Pod 042. “THIS IS SUPPORT UNIT GRIFFON.”

“I’m not a damn support unit!”

V held out his arm with a playful smirk. “Aren’t you?”

Griffon grumbled but still fluttered over to the offered perch. “Congrats on not looking like you rolled out of a garbage dump, kid. Might wanna lose the blindfold though, probably a hazard."

"Oh, it's just a visor! I can see just fine." He crept closer on suddenly timid feet. Griffon was massive up close—maybe he actually could carry off an android. "Did you uhm...learn what you were hoping to...V?"

"I did," V said. "Your maintenance seems to have gone well."

9S caught the subtle shift in V’s grip on the cane. His eyes were looking just over 9S’ shoulder. At the hilt of Cruel Oath.

"Yeah. I… uhm…" He dropped his pack. His flustered fingers dug in, nearly tearing the contents in their haste. They gripped the bottle first. It was a deep green color with an elegant ripple. He had found it in the castle, and a bit of fresh rubber easily stopped the spout.

"I brought water from the oasis,” he blurted. “I heard humans need a lot of water, so I'll try to find another bottle sometime!"

V's wary expression faded, and his brows raised.

9S smiled in earnest, spurred on by the positive--or at least not negative--reaction. "I also brought food! You need food too right?”

“YoRHa know how to cook?”

“Uh…well…No. But Pod 153 told me the minimum internal temperature to kill bacteria in meat, we just…might have…” His voice dropped. “I didn’t want to take too long in case you were hungry, and Pod said humans welcome each other with food, and I didn’t think you’d be able to take on a boar by yourself--”

“9S.”

He jumped to his feet so quickly he nearly dropped the bottle. “Yes!”

“Come here.”

Up close, he finally grasped how tall V was. Even leaning on the cane, he was easily a head over 9S. Though the haughty look that 9S hated was gone, it was still daunting to be looked down at and he noted he was unconsciously flexing his feet inside his shoes. 

It wasn’t like him to get so flustered. Why couldn’t he calm down? His hardware was fully functional, his internal systems were good—was it the damage to his personality data? Or did humanity have that much priority in his programming?

V’s fingers tapped at his cane. “Do you really believe I’m human?”

9S’ vision darkened. Memories processed and unprocessed jostled within him, all his earlier work undone and cluttering his other systems. The weight of every machine and every android he had ever killed pressed down on him, and his personality data trembled. It couldn’t take any more. If V wasn’t human, it would give up and shatter and there would be nothing left of him.

He crossed his arms and made a show of thinking about it. “Well, you’re not an android or a machine and you’re organic, so...”

V extended his hand, and a subtle twitch of his fingers beckoned 9S to take it. “Wilt thou believe without experiment?”

The change of syntax and the lilt of recitation didn’t register. All 9S heard was an offer of proof that seeped in and stirred his curiosity from its sleep. It rose up, ravenous and ready to repeat every fatal mistake it had made in the past, the same beast it had ever been. If V was human, he couldn’t pass up an invitation to do a little first-hand study.

The dry air on the biosynthetic skin of his fingers was a new, almost ticklish sensation. He had never taken his gloves off before, that he could recall. Not for anyone, not for any reason.

Not even for 2B.

Pores. Fingerprints. Wrinkles. Sweat. Winding veins under pale skin. Yielding skin over thin, bony fingers. The halting rhythm of blood pushed by a beating heart. Fine hairs barely felt and barely seen. Angular wrists, angular elbows, angular shoulders. Tiny capillaries that spread like branches of electricity over the whites of his eyes. An overall form that was jutting, crooked, and insubstantial compared to the sleek, highly-optimized, and condensed YoRHa units.

Androids resembled their human creators, but if someone designed V, it wasn’t to win battles, much less a war. There were too many minor, meaningless imperfections. Too many odds and ends that served no purpose.

“You’re real,” 9S said unsteadily. “You’re human.”

“Deliberately, one could say.” He tapped his cane against 9S’ chest. “I hope that puts your anxiety to rest.”

“M-my what?”

“Oh boy…” Griffon scoffed and flew over 9S’ head. “You’ve been strugglin to talk to V without almost jumping out of your shorts every time he says ‘boo’, kid. Now that you’ve held hands and stared into each other’s eyes, we can all relax, yeah?”

“More or less.” V gestured toward the table. “Bring your spoils and let us see how much you have to learn about humans, little lamb.”

9S rushed to go back for his pack. When he turned he was surprised to find V hadn’t moved. He was right where he had been, standing idle with a small, patient smile. The wary grip on his cane had relaxed, and his eyes were lowered.

For at least that moment, it didn’t matter if V was human, how much 9S' programming might or might not be controlling him, or whether his existence had any meaning.

He was happy just to run to someone who was waiting for him.


	9. Dance with the Devil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Today (May 01) is V's birthday. It is also Walpurgisnacht. Make of that what you will.

The combination of technical intelligence and well-meaning innocence that must have led both 9S and Pod 153 to conclude that cooking a lump of meat with a high intensity laser was a reasonable course of action rendered V speechless.

"Is it bad?"

V glanced aside at the android. From his up-cast face to the frown on his slightly agape mouth, 9S radiated both the desire to do well and disappointment that he hadn't.

To think, he had been concerned that the blindfold might make 9S unreadable.

"No, no~" Griffon sweetly mocked. " That's some 5-star cuisine you got there."

"A carrion bird would think so," said V, waving off the appetite-spoiling scent of charcoal and boar musk. "Eat up."

Griffon answered with an exaggerated wretch.

"Damn..." 9S mumbled. He bounded toward the edge of the roof with determined energy. "I'll try again!"

V swerved smoothly around the edge of the dining table and held his cane out across 9S' path. "Wait. Instruction may yield better results. I will go with you."

"I don't think that's a good idea... It's dangerous down there."

V peered down at the swath of low grass and young trees. The open land was dotted with wandering animals, but perhaps it might be best to find a stream instead. He had seen small fish--surely that meant larger ones were available. "I made it here alone. I can only fare better with your assistance."

"Well yeah but... You didn't actually engage anything, right?"

"Your point?"

"You don't know what you're up against," 9S insisted. "The animals are all enormous, and really strong. And there's machines everywhere. You should stay up here where it's safe."

Such solicitousness from a stranger was odd. Nero and the others often suggested he rest his failing body, or back down from excessive danger, but never once had they actively tried to cloister him away for his weakness.

"...You think I'll die,” he realized.

9S flinched. "I think you'll get hurt. I know what I'm up against and I can just undergo repairs if I get damaged." He rubbed fretfully at his sleeves. "You can't."

The genuine but misplaced concern was charming, in a childlike sort of way. 9S, knowing no better, thought V only human. An irreplaceable and easily damaged existence. And one that was all that remained of the reason for his own creation.

It would be a waste, but this wasn’t a problem V was willing to entertain. A boar would make for a fine head upon the proverbial pike.

"I suppose it would be unreasonable to expect your indifference to my comings and goings given the circumstances..." V stepped up onto the roof's edge and lifted his arm. "Allow me to court your confidence instead."

Griffon caught him as he leaped and carried him easily down to the street. 9S landed with a heavy thump beside him. His sword vanished from his back and materialized at the ready just in front of his hands.

"Fancy way to hold a weapon," Griffon observed, more curious than snarky. "Is that an android thing?"

"It's a me thing," 9S answered defensively. "I'm not a combat model, I just...taught myself to fight."

"Well that's a load off my mind. I didn't want to be the one to say it, but you look like even more of a wuss than V. Small wonder you guys have been at war for 5000 years if you were the latest elite war-mech."

9S' mouth twisted and he held out his free hand toward a nearby machine. A faint golden circle appeared in front of his fingertips, and scarcely a second later, the tiny machine halted, performed a clumsy bow, and exploded fantastically.

"Impressive display..." said V, sliding a piece of shrapnel out of his path. "What is your model, if that was not combat?"

"Scanner. Made for intel gathering and infiltration."

"And lacking the ability to wield a weapon is fundamental design for you?"

"For scanners in general." He lifted his chest and raised his chin toward Griffon. "I'm top of the line, so going outside my model's limits wasn't much of a challenge for me."

V smiled. Under that fawning surface was quite an immodest spirit. It stirred a certain restlessness in V. Ideally, he would not have revealed his capabilities so quickly, but now he was eager to see what this ruined earth could throw at him. To know what 9S knew. And if he needed to fight an android, perhaps it was best he observe the top of the line in action.

His stomach loudly reminded him to worry about practical problems before getting ahead of himself.

9S tilted his head. "Are you ok? what was that?"

"Hunger." He eyed a boar rooting around the bottom of a bush and moved toward it.

"ANALYSIS:" said Pod 153. "SUBJECT V'S CHANCE OF SUCCESS IS UNACCEPTABLY LOW. PROPOSAL: UNIT 9S SHOULD SUBJUGATE WILDLIFE."

"Your data is limited." He glanced back under his long lashes. "Watch and learn."

The boar danced and squealed as Griffon soared ahead and opened fire. Wherever it turned to run, he was there, pocking the earth and its hide with his shots. Denied the opportunity to flee, it loosed and agitated snort and turned on its attacker, but no matter how it tossed and kicked, Griffon was never in its range. It could not reach the source of its torment. By the time Griffon returned to V's side, it was beyond self-preservation. It saw something it could attack and charged.

"Come."

Shadow erupted from beneath V’s feet in a cloud of black dust. To the boar's credit, it didn't flinch or hesitate. It made it that much easier for her to aim for the center line.  
Several hundred pounds of muscle and bone was still only muscle and bone no matter how much rage drove it. There was never a chance it would so much as slow her guillotine down.

The boar, split neatly in half, skidded to a stop at V's feet.

On the other side, Shadow stretched and seeped beneath the spilled blood. She re-materialized beside V and rubbed briefly against his thigh before padding toward 9S.

V smiled at the transfixed, open-mouthed android. "She doesn't bite."

"She split a boar in half!" 9S exploded. "That bird has ammunition!"

"Electricity, actually."

"That's not normal!" He paused and looked to Pod 153 for assurance. "It's not, right?!"

"AFFIRMATIVE. AVIAN AND FELINE LIFEFORMS DO NOT APPEAR FULLY ORGANIC."

"You assumed a normal human arrived under such abnormal conditions?" asked V with a half-smile .

9S' mouth moved but didn’t find an answer before he gave in to Shadow's insistent nudges and cautiously began to pet her. "Does she… Er, do you... talk too?"

"She doesn't do human speak," said Griffon. "That's my territory."

"I don't get it, what _are_ you?"

"Don't worry about it too much, boy-bot. You only found out a human existed a few hours ago, the details might be a bit much for your circuits to take in. Just know that we have an arrangement with V. He takes care of us; we take care of him."

“So it is. Now you know, and you can set your mind at ease.” V strolled by 9S and patted his shoulder. His voice sank soft enough to lull but low enough to menace as he leaned in close to his ear. "That rooftop is my perch, but I will not allow it to become my cage."

9S gave a faint, slack-jawed nod. "I'll keep that in mind."

"Good." He gestured over his shoulder to the boar. "Cut what you will and leave the rest to the insects. In the future, we will choose less wasteful prey."


	10. Data Exchange #1

**Pod 153:** Pod 153 to Pod 042. Requesting exchange.

**Pod 042:** Pod 042 to Pod 153. Request accepted.

**Pod 153:** Status report of recently identified human 'V'.

**Pod 042:** Subject V is currently resting with Support Unit Shadow. No problems detected.  
**Pod 042:** How is Unit 9S?

**Pod 153:**  No repair detected in personality data of Unit 9S in spite of improved mental state in response to human presence. Proposal: Pod 042 should propose formal ownership transfer to establish a means of communication between Unit 9S and Subject V.

**Pod 042:** Agreed. However, subject V does not have the necessary interface for full tactical assistance. Support options will remain limited to information.

**Pod 153:** About that. Unit 9S does not have the authority to release classified YoRHa files. Why did Pod 042 relay that data to Subject V?

**Pod 042:** Subject V exists outside of established command chain. No protocols were breached. However, I have been thinking. If subject V’s existence became known, there is likelihood of command fracture and potential repetition of the Rebel Conflict.  
**Pod 042:** Multiple scenario analyses show high potential for aggression against both Unit 9S and subject V himself.

**Pod 153:** This pod also analyzed the projected scenario and came to the same conclusion. Proposal: Pod 042 should prevent subject V from coming into contact with local resistance androids.

**Pod 042:** Agreed.  
**Pod 042:** ...  
**Pod 042:** Pod 153...  
**Pod 042:** Does V's presence represent a need for alteration to the YoRHa project?

**Pod 153:** …  
**Pod 153:** We lack the authority to make that decision. YoRHa final phase will proceed as intended when parameters are met.

**Pod 153:** Until that time, we will continue to provide support.


	11. [C]uriosity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which V has early morning low blood pressure and 9S suggests a fishing trip with no ulterior motives.

9S kicked his heels against the side of the building and replayed the footage of the previous day for at least the 10th time. What he saw and what made sense had yet to overlap, but that didn’t stop him from getting absorbed in every tiny detail. Griffon's pellets of electricity and Shadow's seamless shift between shapes and states of matter riled his curiosity so much he could barely stand it. V's markings, however, were what most enthralled him.

They were at their thickest when 9S first met him, then a little lighter the second time, and a little lighter again when he called Shadow for the kill. It was hard to tell from behind, but he still had a few dark markings left even with both Shadow and Griffon at his side. If the connection was as linear as it appeared, there had to be at least one more of his ‘support units’ in there. 

The feeling as he imagined thousands of permutations of this third unit had little similarity to his usual curious excitement--it was far hungrier.

The tick of V's cane interrupted his thoughts. He cancelled the playback, and discreetly closed his display.

"Morning," he greeted.

V squinted puffy, dark-ringed eyes at him. He didn't look at all like the poised, borderline snobbish figure 9S had met the day before. Sleep had emphasized his bent posture, and he leaned heavily on his cane to compensate as he stumbled toward the table and sank into the empty chair.

"Hey?" 9S swung his legs back over the edge of the rooftop. "Are you...ok?"

V scowled and dragged the remains of the water toward him. He drained the entire thing, swept his hair back, and heaved a vast sigh as his head dropped to the table.

9S tugged Pod down close and murmured. "Is he sick?"

"I'm fine," V rumbled. "I'll thank you to not to jump to foolish conclusions."

"I can't help it! I don't have a lot of data on humans, I only met you yesterday, and you're acting like an entirely different person.”

"I’m just  _groggy_ , 9S."

"Groggy..." herepeated skeptically. “And that's a normal thing for you?”

"Rest and I are infrequent bedfellows." There was a bitter edge to his voice; one that didn't seem targeted at 9S. "Though it has rarely been this elusive."

"ANALYSIS:” said Pod 153. “CERTAIN HUMAN PROCESSES WERE LINKED TO DAY-NIGHT CYCLES CURRENTLY ABSENT IN THIS SECTOR DUE TO TIDAL LOCK. PROPOSAL: NEXT REST PERIOD SHOULD TAKE PLACE IN LOW-LIGHT SETTINGS."

9S’ brows scrunched. He contemplated whether humans would have been able to come back successfully if they had actually been on the moon. Peace would not have changed the altered ecosystem. There were so many odds and ends to human well-being beyond physical self-defense—more than food and water and shelter, too.

Humans were way more fragile than he thought.

"I guess it won't help to go back to sleep, huh?  How about we go fishing?”

V slowly lifted his head looked over at him with profound weariness. "You can fish?"

"I mean, the Pods can."

"I am compelled...to ask how that skill is useful to you."

"PODS ARE EQUIPPED FOR RETRIEVAL OF ANY USEFUL SUBMERGED RESOURCES, INCLUDING MARINE LIFEFORMS."

"Guess that answers that. Since it is for me that you're bothering, I'll accompany you." He hoisted himself back onto his feet with a slightly less expansive sigh and pointed east. "There?"

9S didn’t even have to look to know that he was suggesting the stream near the resistance camp. "That spot's bad. Just follow me, I know a good place."

"I don't mind following, but I do mind not knowing where I'm going."

“Does it really make a difference to tell you where we’re going if you don't know where anywhere is?"

"Knowing nothing means I have everything to learn."

9S hummed approvingly. That was a very scanner-like sentiment. That weird way of talking V had was kicking in, so the grogginess was hopefully out of his system until the next morning.

Maybe he could turn this into an opportunity to see what else V was capable of.

* * *

 

"I can't help but be grateful it's been thousands of years," said V. “I have yet to go a day without entering a pipe.”

9S glanced down at the runoff. “I guess they aren’t usually the cleanest. Don’t worry though; this one only goes in for a few meters.”

He led the way to the elevator tucked neatly off to the right. V didn’t say anything while they waited. From the corner of 9S eye, he could just make out an expression that was neither surprised nor interested when it finally arrived. His mind was elsewhere.

Elevators must have been just as boring to wait for and boring to ride in in V's time.

“Why this particular location?” V asked.

“No machine fish in the water,” he explained. “The only other place that doesn’t have any is the oasis out desert. I get your water from there, but Pod said anything I caught would probably be bad by the time I made it all the way back to the city.”

“Why would the machines make fish?”

Another predictable question. The accepted theory sat on the tip of 9S’ tongue and he knew the exact tone of casual wonder he wanted to use, but the words never came. His mind was elsewhere: Focused on not clenching his fists, and on keeping his expression neutral.

The aliens wanted to damage human food sources? What a joke. From the first invasion, there weren't any humans to starve.

“Who knows,” he answered flatly as the door opened. “There’s no meaning to what machines do.”

 Together they stepped into the clammy darkness of the caves. The doors droned shut behind them, and the both pods clicked on their lights.

“I haven’t been here since the tower fell,” 9S warned quietly. “There were strong machines here before. I don’t know what they’ll be like now.”

V smirked. “I’ll stay close.”

That was either a patronizing jab or genuine anticipation. 9S disliked both possibilities.

Distant echoes murmured from beyond the pale podlights, like the voices of the clammy currents that wrapped around them and beckoned them in. Only their footsteps and the shuffling whispers of their clothing answered. 

Fires appeared in the dark, as well as a familiar yellow spark. Two electromagnetic shields, a few stubbies, some drill-equipped spheres, and a stacker unit with several guns attached.

“I’ll hack the shield units first,” 9S whispered. “You deal with the small units and the drills and I’ll take the tall one in the back as fast as I can. Watch the guns; machines don’t fire traditional ammo, but it’s a pain to dodge their shots if they clog up the field.”

Griffon materialized just ahead of the pod. “Thanks for the tip, boy-bot. We got this.”

9S dashed ahead and drew their attention. The shield unit hacking patterns were tricky but not difficult. He had practiced them hundreds of times, and it took only seconds to down both.  He didn’t expect V to have even begun with his targets, which made the burst of lightning as he exited hacking space that much more dazzling.

The stubbies fell over and even the drill units dropped to the ground, not destroyed but disabled by the strong shock.

Strange violet light bounced off the damp walls. No sooner did 9S search for the source than it was suddenly on the other side of the tunnel. One by one, the downed machines began to detonate. 9S focused ahead rather than play catch up. Over the final enemy, he caught V wink into existence and pierce the core of his target. The glow was emanating from his cane.

He didn’t bother to ask the pod if that was normal. It had to be something similar to the overclock chip favored by combat models. How V was doing that without the assistance of any systems of overclock would have to wait.

The path to the stacked unit was clear, and it was focused on V. 9S darted in close before the barrels could reorient on him and threw his sword. Cruel Oath spun on-target, and the easily deconstructed unit fell to pieces and exploded.

Off to the side, V curiously trailed after a stray orb. It popped like a bubble at the touch of his cane.

He ran his hand over his cane and the glow vanished. “How much further?”

“Just up ahead where the light is. There’s a straight drop down to the lake from there.”

And, if 9S recalled correctly, an enemy type that would be a lot more of a challenge would be in their way. In the open, they were a pain. In this tight space, they would be lucky to come away unscathed. It was risky, but V was the one who insisted on not staying where it was safest.

He had to know more. He needed to know more.

The ground rumbled beneath their feet, and 9S' eyes lit with excitement behind his blindfold. A drill erupted from the tunnel wall above them. 9S dodged one way and Griffon carried V another. The rotating saws that made up the serpentine body sprayed loose earth, pelting them and obscuring their vision.

Another burst of electricity lit the cave. Griffon's attack did not have the same incapacitating effect it doled out on the smaller units. Shadow dived beneath it and burst into a mass of spikes. Some of the saws came free of the electromagnetic field that held them in place, but others sparked against her pins and needles until they shattered.  At V's beckon, she limped back to his side.

For a moment, they were bathed in the golden glow of its core. The few saws that had been dislodged leapt back in line at the tail end, and it was as though no damage had been done at all.

"I see..." V purred. He stepped backward and Pod 042s flashlight clicked off.

9S whipped around, terrified at the notion of not knowing where V was in the dark, but he couldn’t spare his attention. The enemy unit was taking up a majority of the already tight tunnel and winding in hard-to-predict coils as it sought 9S out. It took his complete concentration to dodge effectively, and without V to act as a distraction, there were no openings to hack in.

"Pod, switch to laser-based projectiles and open fire!"

A rapid hum-click over his shoulder preceded a winding beam of plasma that licked along the linked saws until it found the core and lit the tight corridor in white. The electromagnetic field wouldn’t hold long against laser fire, he just had to keep pod in the right position relative to the core.

Words seeped from the darkness behind him in measured, predatory timbres. " _And their sun does never shine, and their fields are bleak and bare, and their ways are filled with thorns. It is eternal winter there…_ "

"What are you--!"

Shadow leapt forward, guided to her prey by the light of the pod fire. Her head transformed into a thick black spike which pierced through the core and into the ceiling.

9S had never seen a linked unit be immobilized that way. The saws stuttered, spat, and sparked. The drill spun faster, the high-pitched whine of taxed hinges cutting through the cold silence of the cave. Dust rained on them as it dragged Shadow onward inch by inch.

What 9S saw next, he first interpreted as V using one of the pod's programs. However, the six spectral blades that circled the link-type machine core were not YoRHa design. They were canes—copies of V's cane, to be exact.

Shadow retracted her head spike. The canes pierced six times what she had pierced once.  The core exploded.  The links all followed suit in rapid succession, scattering their path in scorched metal and burning splashes of oil.

The light from Pod 042 clicked back on. V walked ahead to the waiting mouth of the cave and leaned over the edge. He hiked his cane up over his shoulder with a satisfied smile and waved his hand in an 'after you' gesture to 9S.

"It seems our way is clear."


	12. Blissful Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While V sleeps, 9S wrestles himself.

Aside from a few scattered blocks of white carbon, the lake was exactly as 9S remembered it. Whatever subterranean flow fed the reservoir did not disturb the upper waters. Save for where Pod 153 bobbed along in wait, there were scarcely any ripples to disturb the reflective surface.

The deathly stillness comforted him somehow, enough to make him forget he was kind of bored. The caves were unchanged by events on the surface. It felt like an altogether different world.

One where he could think properly.

V leaned limp against a wayward bit of carbon debris. With the podlights off to avoid attracting unwanted attention, the only light source was the faded daylight that shone down from an opening at least half a kilometer above. He had fallen asleep almost as soon as he sat down.

A swell of protectiveness washed over 9S but by the time it permeated him, it was guilt. He had endangered a human--the only human--to feed his own curiosity. How could he have been so stupid?

His fingers sank into his crossed arms. The highs and lows of caring for a human were brand new and already old enough to be annoying.

It was all the same. YoRHa was gone and _still_ he was punished for his curiosity. Only this time there was no one to kill him. No terrible truths to undo himself with. The only punishment was guilt for not doing the one single job that spared him his intended obsolescence.  Guilt just as irrational and disconnected from him as some of the things he felt when he looked at V.

The relief and the desire to protect V? Those might be his or they might not be. The craving to know everything about V? For all the good it did him, curiosity came from his personality data, not his other programming. That was him.

But the sense of belonging and the oozing, dreamlike sensation that everything was okay? That wasn’t him. That didn’t come from any place in him that he claimed as his own.

And 9S wasn’t so hypnotized by that forced feeling of fulfillment that he believed V’s presence changed anything.

V was just a lone man. The benefits of his presence were real to 9S but that didn’t mean they were tangible. He couldn't rebuild humanity, he couldn't rebuild the Earth, and he couldn't change anything in any way that mattered. He was going to die like everyone else. It stirred slight sympathy—after all, V hadn’t asked to be there any more than 9S had asked to be made. But he was human, and they aged, and they died by their design. It was only a matter of time.

Griffon and Shadow were much stronger than he thought. The electrical discharge from the fore alone meant V would never be threatened by any of the compact units, and if Shadow could pin something as powerful as a link-type in place, she could probably shred right through any of the medium machines. Who knew what the third one was capable of?

It felt like acid in his veins, but he had accepted that ‘a matter of time’ was going to be later rather than sooner.

The pod bobbed and broke the surface of the water with a weighty silver fish in its grasp.  "REPORT: CARP."

Another swell of pride at successfully finding something V could use. At _being_ something V could use.

It felt fantastic.

It disgusted him.

Deep within a miraculously intact kernel of identity that had nothing to do with his programming or his amorphous but enduring hate, it quietly pleased him to have done something good for someone who was relying on him. 

The strain of processing so much contradiction would eventually take him beyond what repairs could fix. If they didn’t, V’s death would.

That was okay. He had always planned to die anyway; it was just going to take a lot longer than letting the elements rot him out among the tower rubble. He had to stay at V’s side. Not for V's sake, nor for his own, and not for a second to appease whatever abhorrent algorithm lurked beyond the reach of his hacking and doled out pleasure or punishment as it saw fit.

"Pod 042?" he called, pressing a finger to his lips for silence as the pod came near. "I'm going to go back up and pick up some of those torches the machines were carrying. Stay with V. Don't let anything happen to him."

Pod 042 flashed his antennae in silent affirmation of the order. A display appeared between them.

_Analysis,_ it read. _Unit 9S may frequently need to be away from Subject V in order to procure supplies, undergo maintenance, etc. Proposal: Support Unit Pod 042 should be permanently assigned to Subject V to provide a constant channel of communication and ensure Subject V has support in the event of an emergency_.

"Is that possible without a YoRHa ID circuit?"

_With Unit 9S' permission, it should remain within acceptable protocols._

"Then do it. If you run into an issue, I'll deal with it when I get back."

With Pod 153 in tow, 9S made his way back toward the upper tunnels.

As long as V lived, it spat in the face of whoever had cursed 2B to repeat their agonizing cycle over and over for nothing. As long as V lived, even if it tore 9S down and ultimately ruined him, he could believe that her suffering had not been pointless.

It was for her, and her alone.


	13. The Unknown Shore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> V and 9S search the Flooded City for clues but 9S seems off-put.

V stood under a severed corner of roofing and shielded his eyes. Strong sunlight bathed the ruins. The clouds had cleared while they were underground and bleached remains of human structures shone bright, but the remnants of the tower reflected the light from their stark white faces with ruthless efficiency.

"I think I preferred the caves,” said V, wiping stinging tears from his eyes. “But I have business to attend to."

From above, 9S poked his head over the edge of the makeshift shelter. "You do?"

"The distance between me and my destination is considerable. If I’m to make a second crossing…” He pointed his cane across the crater to a different pipe. “I should seek to know how I made the first."

"Oh... You want to go back to the coast."

V glanced up at his companion. Yesterday's over-zealousness had settled down as he hoped, but strange clouds lingered over that face.

The pods were simple by nature. 9S cultivated simplicity and wore it much the same way he wore the blindfold. Futile, if his desire was secrecy. V had seen when they first met that 9S had the eyes of someone who welcomed death.

"You seem displeased."

"It’s not that..." He fell silent, and the clouds over his brow gathered only thicker as his head bowed toward the earth.

What a curious choice to impart a tool of war any feeling at all.

"I would be glad for a scanner’s eye, but you do not have to accompany me." He raised his arm and Griffon's third of tattoos shifted and grayed. "I know the way."

9S all but tumbled from his perch to snatch V’s coat. "Wait! I'll go."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah." He released V's coat and looked tight-lipped across the rubble. "I'll go with you..."

* * *

 

The coastline remained gray despite the clear skies over the inner ruins, and V's mood grayed in kind. The broken, half-sunken roads and eroded architecture might as well have been entirely underwater for all they offered in the way of clues. The junky clutter ancient road signs, car parts, and mildewed remains of furniture that must have fallen from the pitching buildings to rot in the street hid no secrets. The most V learned was that the missile he had dismissed as probably just a relic was very much still armed.

In short, nothing. No traces of demonic energy, no change in anything 9S or the pods could detect, and nothing that caught Griffon or Shadow's attention. Not so much as an unusual weather pattern preceded or trailed V’s appearance.

Worse, 9S was not focused on the task at hand. He was preoccupied instead with an anxiety whose source he declined to reveal. V didn’t press him, though it frustrated him. He had remained practically at his heel during their entire search, but nothing struck him as out of place. Combing through the dust a second time would only waste energy.

“Let’s go.” He turned back inland. "There is nothing here."

"You go ahead," said 9S. "There's one more place here I want to look into."

V's brow furrowed. "Another dangerous place you wish me to keep clear of, I assume.”

9S frowned and shook his head. “I know you're strong, but down there…” He hesitated. “Please just let me do this alone. I'll meet up with you back on the rooftop."

He didn't wait for permission to be granted or denied.

Neither did Griffon, who materialized at V's side and watched the android run off. "Whaddya think that was all about?"

V looked thoughtfully at Pod 042. It was effectively his now, and the order from 9S to provide him any information he desired still stood. It would have been simple to find out where he was going.

Instead he moved back down the long, jagged road the way they had come.

"Uhhh, V?” Griffon asked, fluttering after him. “Not to put too much pressure on you but we did the bit where we checked for clues and didn't find anything. What do we do now?"

A good question. For which he had no answers.

Dimensional particles that kept him whole and gave his feeble form strength. Humanity in a world where humans were just ghosts that preoccupied machines and androids alike. A pod that provided knowledge and single android who meant well but had something to hide.

All great assets, but he would need to take his time to reap the benefits of each.

“How many hours of reading did you have archived, Pod 042?”

“14,934.”

“We will aim to make it shorter than that.”

“What?” Griffon squawked incredulously. “Are you seriously thinking about going through that thing’s entire archive? We’ll be here forever!”

V slowed to a stop. A grave expression darkened his features, and his fingers pressed tight into the grooves of his cane. “That is… also a possibility.”

A humid breeze ruffled his jacket and settled sticky salt onto his skin. Had he found the way home neatly tucked behind a waterfall or sitting in the surf, he doubted he would have gone home. The dilemma of this dead earth and its mechanical denizens didn’t interest him. Their wars and their lies and their loss of purpose were their problems, and he had no plans to utilize his humanity if it didn’t benefit him.

Yet it could not be ignored that this world tempted him.

Even if it was only because it was barren, it was tranquil. For him, such peace only existed in his mind as fragmented memories all but lost beneath the long struggle to survive. He had no reason to go return immediately and every reason to indulge in a few idyllic weeks to himself, as himself. The possibility of being unable to go back cast an unexpected shadow, but one he was quick to shrug off.

“The inevitable cannot be rushed nor delayed. If there is a way back, we will find it. If there isn’t, we won’t.” He cracked a dour smile and resumed his pace. “Catching up on my reading is not the worst way to spend 2 years.”

Griffon eyed him, but for once, he didn’t say anything and quietly melted back into V’s tattoos.

With only the wonderfully silent pod at his side, V’s mind wandered to his new companion. 9S had given V no reason to distrust him thus far. Shadow was sharp when it came to killing intent, but she never stirred while they slept. That only meant 9S didn’t want to harm him. As happy as he seemed to help V in whatever way he could, that didn’t necessarily mean he shared V’s goals.

That the first thing he met was an android whose model revolved around information was miraculous. It would have been too suspicious if 9S was also one of likely very few androids in this world that could find a human and be happy to help them leave.

He had nearly completed the hike back to the end of the road when the pod broke the silence. “QUERY: WHAT IS THE NATURE OF UNITS GRIFFON AND SHADOW? ARCHIVAL SEARCHES HAVE YIELDED MINIMAL RESULTS.”

“You have quite the nosy streak,” V teased.

“ALL PODS ARE INSTALLED WITH BASIC PERSONALITY TEMPLATES AND CONVERSATIONAL ABILITY. HOWEVER, THIS POD’S QUERY IS INTENDED TO INFORM BEST SUPPORT PRACTICES. SUBJECT V DOES NOT POSSESS AN FFCS OR IFF CIRCUIT, SO TACTICAL SUPPORT IN COMBAT MUST BE MADE AT THIS POD’S DISCRETION AND WITH CARE TO AVOID FRIENDLY FIRE.”

“Aren’t you considerate. I will tell you then…If you’ll tell me something first.”

“Proposal accepted.”

V gestured to the approaching bend where the road curved inland. “Why is it that 9S was particularly tense when we passed that corner?”

“ANALYSIS: UNIT 9S MAY HAVE EXPERIENCED PSYCHOLOGICAL DISCOMFORT DUE TO CRASH SITE PROXIMITY.”

It wasn’t the answer V expected.

“What crash site?”


	14. Echoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> V encounters the flight unit of Pod 042's former assignment and learns more than he intended.

At the bottom of an embankment was a battered mechanical shape that didn't resemble anything V had yet seen. The bottom half was submerged, the upper half crushed into the mud by tower debris. There was only a crooked pipe poking out to even signify it was there from above.

He slid carefully down the steep incline using his cane to steady himself. Like the dining table, the surface of the machinery was dusty but clearly new despite its combat damage. It had few signs of natural wear and tear. A slip of his fingers over a sleek corner showed a perfect matte black color beneath the dust. "Is this YoRHa technology?"

"AFFIRMATIVE. THIS WAS THE FLIGHT UNIT ASSIGNED TO THIS POD'S PREVIOUS OWNER, YORHA UNIT 2B."

V raised a brow and leaned in until he could identify something that looked like the back of a pilot seat pressed flat down into the muck. He sighed when he found it empty. "How did you come to be assigned to 9S?"

"REPORT: ...IT IS A LONG STORY."

The pod's sudden reticence caught V off guard. With the timeline to his return home stretched to a minimum measured in years, it behooved him to more about his new acquaintances. That 9S was uncommunicative was one thing, but to be dodged by the pod?

"It seems I tread in troubled streams." He peered closer at the interior in search of anything unusual. It was something they hadn't searched, and he wasn’t about to pass it over out of sentiment.

Pod 042's antenna lifted and something inside the flight unit sputtered to life. A woman's voice fought through a din of static. Her speech hitched and gasped, words halting and apologetic as she stumbled toward the heart of her clearly final request.

_"9S... The time I was able to spend with you..."_

V’s cane ended the message in sparks and smoke. He climbed back up the embankment, sparing a disdainful glance at the pod as he passed it by. It wasn’t until he reached the other side of the broken road that he stopped and sat where the guardrails sagged and gave way to the murky sea.

The silent but intense attention of the pod tingled across his back. "QUERY: WHY DID SUBJECT V HALT PLAYBACK?"

"If that message already reached 9S, then there is no need for her bared heart to reach me as well." He rubbed absently at his knuckles. "I’m not the type to pry merely for prying's sake. I didn't ask you to do that."

"IT WAS RELATED TO SUBJECT V’S PREVIOUS QUERY. ADDITIONALLY, THIS POD BELIEVED IT WOULD HELP SUBJECT V UNDERSTAND UNIT 9S."

A dry laugh escaped through V's nose, and some of the tension eased from his shoulders.

Pod had specified he had a personality and the capacity for judgement calls, but V had expected that was limited to combat. Personal discretion was a very different matter. His motives remained too simple to be anything but honest, but he might not be above undesirable behaviors.

"You could have just said 9S inherited you from 2B."

"NEGATIVE. THE LAST ORDER OF UNIT 2B WAS TO SUPPORT ROGUE YORHA UNIT A2. UNIT A2’S FINAL ACTIONS INCAPACITATED BOTH HER AND UNIT 9S BEFORE COLLAPSING THE TOWER. THIS POD WAS TASKED WITH ENSURING THE SAFETY OF 9S AT THAT TIME."

The tower again... It was proving to be the epicenter of much more than the end of the most recent war.

V didn’t really want more information, but he also didn’t want to have to navigate this conversation again in the future. "Why did 2B give you to a rogue unit instead of 9S?"

The pod clicked open and a display appeared. An elegant female figure erupted mid-air from a crashing flight unit—the same that V could have crossed the road to see. Like 9S, her clothes were fully black and her hair pure white. While her body broke down due to virus infection, she fought her way through the tunnel, through the city, to a place where she could die alone. All to avoid passing her infection on to other androids. She overheated. Combusted. Her stumble became a limp, and her limp became a shamble. She pushed forward on whatever limbs would work as her pain-stricken voice turned tinny and metallic

While barely able to hold her sword, she was surrounded by other infected androids laughing in shrill, overlapping voices.

Her savior was not 9S, but an android that shared her face. A model so run down that her clothing had worn away to scratched and dusty scraps and the black creases between her joints showed. 2B’s fading voice confirmed that this twin who cut the other androids down with practiced ease was A2.

2B's last words, her will, and her weapon were not left in the flight unit. They were left with A2, who showed her acceptance by taking 2B's life before the virus could.

As the red light faded from her eyes, she looked over her shoulder and a warm smile lifted her lips. She sighed, but the words carried on her final breath were cut off by the sudden end of the video.

The silence stretched on so wholly that even the splashes and whispers of the waves sounded muffled and distant. He too had stumbled on a crumbling body toward his own end. For himself. While 2B had done it for others. For 9S.

“Again,” he said with a shaken voice. “You couldn’t have just…told me that?”

“REPORT: PLAYBACK WAS THE MOST EXPEDITIOUS MEANS OF RELAYING DATA.”

Pod 042 turned and clicked his claws, and V followed the gesture.

In the distance, he could just make out a bobbing white head atop pitch-black clothing.

* * *

"You're still here...?" 9S asked dully.

"I am,” V answered without looking up from the sea. “Did you find anything?"

"No. Nothing. Sorry."

He looked over his shoulder. 9S looked even more sullen than when they'd parted. The apprehension had drained out of him, but in many ways he looked the same sad dredge as when V first saw him.

Perhaps even a measure worse. "You're injured."

9S clapped a hand to his head and smeared away the trickle of red fluid seeping from under his blindfold. "Oh. This is nothing."

"Take off the blindfold."

"It's really nothing; it's fine."

"It wasn't a request.” 

9S' mouth dropped open even as the rest of his body tensed. His fingers twitched and clenched, but ultimately he yielded. The skin over his temple was torn. Blood poured from beneath a filmy substance that had even V could recognize as sloppily applied.

He tapped his cane expectantly on the open ground to his right.

9S swung his legs over the guardrail and obediently sat in a sulky, cross-legged hunch. More than the mystery of why an android should bleed, V was drawn in by the powerless fury that radiated from 9S’ eyes.

Perhaps it was because he had already seen himself in 2B’s death march, but he found that expression repulsively familiar.

"The nano machines will take care of it," 9S grumbled. "It's just a scratch."

"Then why didn't you patch it properly?" 9S didn't answer and V turned back to the ocean, looking out at the smoking titan standing in the surf. "You were here, weren't you? When that creature was defeated."

"Did Pod 042 tell you that?" When V didn’t dignify the petulant tone with a response, 9S rolled his eyes and tore off the badly applied barrier. "...Its name was Grün."

He held up his hand to Pod 153, who supplied him more of the substance in the form of a loose gel. "We were here to help protect a carrier out at sea for the Resistance. It rose up out of the ocean. Destroyed the carrier and everyone on it, dropped an entire YoRHa squadron into the sea. I had to ride one of those missiles directly into his mouth to kill it."

“I see.” V leaned his chin onto his cane. "How old are you, 9S?"

The question took the android by surprise. “That doesn’t really matter, does it? I was made, not born. I don’t age.”

That was true, and it was the problem. His makers could build him however they wished, but they chose…that. And the more V tried to reconcile that appearance with what he knew, the greater his irritation. “I’m asking why they built you with the mind and appearance of an adolescent.”

9S' eyes shot open. Confusion and indignant embarrassment vied within them. "I'm not a _child_!"

"I haven’t made up my mind about whether or not that’s the case. However, I have come to... appreciate that in spite of your appearance, you must have many unpleasant memories you would rather not face."

"Are you...apologizing to me?"

"For what offense?” V asked nonchalantly. “You had the opportunity to stay behind and chose to come here anyway. I am acknowledging you for coming despite knowing it would cause you pain.”

“Thanks,” 9S said begrudgingly. “I guess…”

“That said…” V slid the tip of his cane under 9S’ chin. “I was not anticipating physical pain to be a part of the matter. What happened?”

“Nothing I didn’t deserve.” He pushed halfheartedly at the cane and stared down at his stained blindfold. “I’m alright. I’ve endured worse than this.”

V sighed and rose to his feet. He had enough to think about without fighting 9S for more answers. “I will take your word for it. In exchange, do not be so reckless. My time here will be… long, it seems. It will only be longer if I am without your assistance.”

9S looked up at him like he had something to say, or maybe to ask. There was a flicker of feeble hope in his eyes. But he only gave a weak, apologetic smile and nodded.

“Sorry… I’ll take better care of myself.”


	15. Guilty Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While V takes on his big project, 9S goes on a supply run and tries to keep his mind busy.

9S was quiet while they trekked back to the ruins. No matter how many glances he stole, V’s face was the same every time. Undisturbed, with his hooded eyes focused on where he was going. Hopefully, he was as unruffled as he looked. 9S hadn’t meant to sound so grim, but the things he saw down in the coliseum...

He shook the thoughts from his head. It was fine. It was none of his business and he knew what he was getting into when he decided to show his face there.

Only when they finally made it back did 9S break his silence. “So… What are you intending to do now?”

V shot him a quick, high-browed glance, as though he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. “I need to understand what kind of information is in the pod's archives.”

“Like a summary report?”

“NEGATIVE,” said Pod 042, already unfolding into the largest display possible. “SUBJECT V IS REVIEWING THE COMPLETE INDEX FOR ARTICLES OF INTEREST.”

“The _whole_ index?” 9S circled around to V’s side, leaning over to see if he was serious. “That’s a really big job V. It’ll take you forever.”

“Pod’s total archive is only two years’ worth of continuous reading," V said matter-of-factually. "What is a week or even a month spent to whittle that down?”

“Whittle…?”

9S’ face blanked as he realized just what V’s plan was. He had to be crazy or underestimating just how much data it was; or both. It was so much data that even 9S, with his voracious appetite for new knowledge, found it overwhelming. V couldn’t possibly process it all. Human error meant he was going to miss something. Maybe something silly, maybe something crucial. Did he even have a keyword in mind? A search term? Or was he just going to go through the index once just to rule out sure negatives?

9S didn't voice any of those concerns.

Instead he turned his attention to the glass bottle sat on the dining table, as empty as when they’d left, and tucked it under his arm. “If you really mean it, you’ll be at it awhile, so I’ll go get more supplies.”

V gave a distracted nod. He was already engrossed.

There was still a lot 9S didn't understand about humans, but he thought with a glow of pride that V really was like a scanner model. 

* * *

 

  
Getting water was easy; getting one bottle of water at a time was inefficient and a pain that 9S thought better to deal with as soon as possible. The castle had given him a single intact bottle already. Logically, there was bound to be more somewhere in there.

He ignored the knight machines if he could afford to. They were still as bad-tempered as ever and he wasn’t above fighting back if he needed to, he just didn’t feel like killing them. Not if he didn't have to. Not today. It satisfied him enough to see the soul box lay at the bottom of the ravine like garbage in a pit as he crossed the castle bridge.

The fall of the tower had crushed a lot of the castle’s stonework. Rooms that were impossible to access before now had plenty of sunlight spilling into them. The old pathways 9S knew were gone, but there was nothing left to discover in those rooms. He needed something new. Something like the tight stairwell he found behind a door he had never seen before.

“ALERT: STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY MAY BE COMPROMISED. ESCAPE FROM UNDERGROUND FLOOR UNLIKELY IN THE EVENT OF COLLAPSE.”

“Y-yeah… I’ll be careful.”

The familiar tingle of inquisitiveness pricked along his fingertips. Mentally, he chided himself. Maybe getting so excited over new things was why V had called him a child. This was all to help him stay focused on his data scour, but how was 9S supposed to stay focused on that? Especially when completely new location data was opening in front of him. Anything could be at the bottom of those steps.

The stairwell turned in a steep spiral deep down into the earth and was collapsed at several spots. Most of them 9S squeezed through without too much trouble. One required a stressful wriggle through a gap between a massive pile of rubble and the ceiling while he alternated between rapid-fire prayers that the subtle tremors caused by his movement wouldn't collapse onto him and a smug sense of validation.

If he was built any bigger, he would never have gotten through that.

The narrow cone of podlight suddenly filtered out into a long, open hall. Rotted, collapsed wooden racks lined the walls and spilled hundreds of bottles out along the floor. Tattered cobweb veils swayed in air that had been stale for who knew how many thousands of years. Unlike the caves, it was warm. Sticky humidity settled on 9S, caking the dust onto his skin.

“What's this place?”

“REPORT: WINE CELLAR. LIKELIHOOD OF FINDING DESIRED MATERIALS HIGH.”

9S hummed but didn’t get his hopes up. Most of the bottles were broken or otherwise unusable. The ones that were still good didn’t have wine in them. Just remnants of long-dead molds and a sharp, unpleasant smell. He took two and carried them gingerly back the way he had come. One minor but nerve-wracking landslide and more steps than he cared to count later, he emerged gratefully back into the sunlight.

Not that it wasn’t expected, but he grimaced at seeing just how filthy he was. Cobwebs and dirt and grit covered him head to toe. The falls would do to clean him off, but a hot bath would have been fantastic.

“Hey Pod?” he called out as he made for the nearest stream. “Humans need to bathe right?”

“WHILE NOT RELEVANT TO BASIC SURVIVAL, BATHING PRACTICES SHOWED MANY BENEFITS IN HUMANS, INCLUDING REDUCTION IN THE INCIDENCE OF ILLNESS.”

“Hmm… Nobody likes a cold bath though. You think there’s somewhere we could find a big basin? Maybe a barrel would do… Something we could heat water in… ”

“INTACT LARGE MACHINE LIFEFORM TORSO MATCHES THE SHAPE AND SIZE UNDER CONSIDERATION.”

9S stopped.

The stingy light of the coliseum's lobby was not enough to hide what was going on. The machines locked in those dark cells until it was their turn in the pit had not been spared the infection. Their mangled faces revealed horrific, grinning jaws, but they still cowered and cried out like always.

He remembered telling himself the machines had to have gone berserk and killed some of the androids who came as patrons, even though that was over a month ago. Machines had eaten some of Anemone's people alive. Maybe the same thing had happened here. He told himself that and tried to put on a cold face. But even now the screech of metal bending and warping and tearing and scraping as the androids tore them apart however they could, with whatever they could, echoed in his mind.

They were everywhere. In the seats, in the arena, in the lobby. And yet that chaos gave way to a hush as soon as he entered it.

The goggles worn by some of the resistance members gave their eyes the reflective look of animals watching him from the dark. Others had a different light in their eyes. It wasn't about infection or revenge. He could see the reports behind their gazes, fueling hate that he knew too well. There was nothing furtive or ambiguous in their looks like there had been at the resistance camp. 

They would have torn him apart with their bare hands if he had let them. 

"I don't want to bathe in a machine's body, Pod. That’s… It’s a bit much."

The stream was swift and shallow and mercifully empty of anything but a few idling moose that paid him no mind. He rinsed the bottles first. The dust and dead bugs came out easily, but the ancient crusted splotches of what must have once been wine took a little more convincing. So did the smell.

When the three dark green bottles sat clean and shining on the bank, he took another quick look around. Satisfied that there weren’t any machines nearby, he kicked off his shoes and socks, waded into the current, and dropped underwater.

It didn’t hold a candle to a hot bath, but it was refreshing at least.

He dragged himself, sopping clothes and all to a patch of sunlight and laid flat. He didn’t feel like moving. The green leaves above him swayed in hypnotizing patterns, and the sound of the stream rushing over the edge of the ravine lulled him. Even the twinkle of the drops left on the bottles made a smile itch the corners of his lips.

Suspicion arose in him that it was another trick of his programming. Probably just a little reward for finding more supplies for V, he thought. Yet he couldn’t convince himself that was the case. As little sense as it probably made outside his own head, this contentment didn’t come from the same place. It wasn't invasive, it was internal. It was _his_. It was the same feeling he always got during their downtime. All of his favorite memories were in places like this, at times like this.  No mission to hurry to. No urgent business. No combat. Not even a conversation to break the peace. Just the two of them, together.

What was he doing laying there alone like some happy idiot? 

Not a moment later he had his shoes back on and was back on his feet. He had to get to the oasis. Now that he had the bottles he could…

“Oh god dammit,” he hissed.

Caught up in the little joy of his adventure into the wine cellar, he hadn’t put it together in his head that his pack was nowhere near big enough to hold all three of the bottles. They were far too old and too hard to get to for him to risk running with them. So, he either had a very long walk ahead of him, or he was going to have to find a bigger pack.

In his desperation to avoid a redundant trip, a memory sparked. “There was a resistance outpost near the south entrance to the forest, wasn’t there?”

“AFFIRMATIVE.”

“Put it on the map.”

“ALERT: UNIT 9S SUSTAINED UNNECESSARY DAMAGE DURING PREVIOUS INTERACTION WITH RESISTANCE FORCES. PROPOSAL: UNIT 9S SHOULD BE CAUTIOUS WHEN APPROACHING OTHER ANDROIDS AND AVOID CONFRONTATION.”

Despite her protest, the outpost site was already on the map as he’d asked. "It's fine," he said reflexively. "Assuming he’s still alive, I think I know someone there who will help us.”


	16. Undeserving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 9S meets an android he once did a favor for, responds poorly to unexpected kindness, and digs the hole of his self-hatred a little deeper.
> 
> TW: Self-harm/self-destruction

9S slowed as he approached the outpost. Like a microcosm of the main camp, it wasn't much. Just a loose assortment of supplies huddled together under a discolored flap of fabric. The shopkeeper sagged on the single stool, and even from afar 9S could see the report haunted his face as well. It lived in the wrinkles that creased his brow and the dullness of his gaze.

“Hello...?” he called meekly.

The shopkeeper looked up and his eyes widened, recognition lending its brightness to them. “You…”

9S held the bottles tight against his chest, but his tension was short-lived.

The shopkeeper smiled and rose from his seat, opening his arms and waving 9S in. "Come, come in. It's good to see you’re still alive."

The unexpectedly warm welcome only made 9S wary. He approached at a slow amble, peering around the empty tent. "You’re alone here...?"

“For now. Our little outpost was lucky, the trees caught the worst of the tower fall. Other places...” A single wrinkle reappeared on his forehead but vanished as quickly as it came. “We're all okay here. My guys are just off on an errand; they’ll be back. “

“That's… good.”

Uncomfortable silence filled the space between them, all the more so because 9S seemed to be the only one made uneasy by it.

“So, what can I do for you?”

“A bag,” 9S blurted gratefully, relaxing to show the bottles in his arms. “I’ll be carrying these around with me, and I need something that’ll keep them from breaking.”

“One-time trip?”

“No. I’m hoping these will last me a long time.”

The shopkeeper nodded and trudged deeper into the shade of the tarp. “I have something for storage, but glass is fragile. You’ll need something to put between them to absorb impact. Thick fabric, if you can find it, but dirt will do just fine if you can’t.”

“I’m headed to the desert next. I can pack in a bunch of sand.”

The shopkeeper glanced back at him and dug deeper into his supply box. Like most resistance materials, the pack he presented was inelegantly designed, having sacrificed appearance for maximum functionality. He laid it out flat on a table that was little more than a plank on a pole and reclaimed his seat.

“How much?” 9S asked.

A dismissive hand wave answered him. “Take it. The machines in the city proper have been dead quiet since the tower came down. I can spare a single pack.”

9S frowned. “Why? There’s no reason to give me this for free.”

“There isn’t, no. But we all lost a lot this war, and by my estimate you lost a lot more than most.” He smiled, and the aura of care was so genuine it made 9S’ chest tighten and throb. “If there’s gotta be a reason, let’s say…It’s my way of contributing to one less casualty in all this.”

“I don’t think YoRHa can be counted as casualties,” he said. An ugly feeling squirmed in his chest, but his tone carried neither venom nor despair. He had thought on the subject often since V appeared and come to terms with his intended purpose as a YoRHa android. It still bit at him, but the agony of it was largely gone. It was just a fact, cool and impartial. “We’re all supposed to be dead. Including me.”

The shopkeeper blinked sleepily and regarded him with the same unruffled expression Anemone had when he had accused her of pitying him. Androids didn’t age, but 9S understood that look now. Even A2 had shown something like it. It was the look of an old soldier who had heard some variant of 9S’ words a hundred times before and had spoken the very same words a hundred times before that.

“You’re not though,” he replied simply. “Dead men don’t gather glass bottles.”

9S couldn’t retort an outlook that frustratingly simplistic without bringing up V or admitting things he wasn’t ready to acknowledge.

He had the heart of the enemy he had been made to fight. And he had fought them. Over and over and over again, he killed them while denying them life or emotion or meaning, in spite of seeing—and sometimes feeling all too closely—a bounty of evidence to the contrary. He had seen how poorly machines fared when they either fulfilled or failed the treasures that gave them purpose. The multitude of implications about his nature were unbearable, so he didn’t bear them. He couldn’t.

Unable to defend himself against the pressure of so many unconfessable thoughts, he attacked behind a guise of innocent interest. “How’s your culinary research going?”

The shopkeeper’s face blanked. He rubbed at his arm and dropped his eyes, giving a stuttering laugh. “Ah that. I gave that up. There’s no one to cook for and since we don’t actually need to eat, I thought it was pretty wasteful.”

He was smiling in such a bittersweet, self-effacing way that 9S grew hot with shame.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, bowing his head. “I didn’t mean to be so petty.”

“Don’t worry your head over it,” the shopkeeper said goodheartedly. “It was just a silly dream of mine. I’ll find another.”

_**“IT WASN’T!”** _

He hadn’t had any time to think of the words, much less feel them coming. The echo still bounced under the heavy canopy when 9S realized that desperate explosion had come from him. He was dangerously close to tears, and that he’d very nearly dropped the bottles. He bit his lip to keep it from shaking, and rapidly stuffed the bottles into the pack, nearly breaking them in his haste.

“Anthurium.”

9S flinched. “What?”

“My name,” he explained. “It’s Anthurium. Anthy is fine, though.”

“…9S.” He grabbed the bag and clutched it in his arms. Many things had angered or annoyed him since he repaired himself, but Anthurium’s self-dismissal was the first thing that had hurt.

“It wasn’t silly,” he repeated softly.

He took off at a run before the inexplicable ache could take deeper roots.

* * *

It was hours before 9S made it back to the foot of the skyscraper but he returned with with a full supply of water, fish, and firewood.

“Pod, carry all this up, would you? I have one more errand to run.”

The pod turned to face him with no immediate response, as if baffled he would make such a request. “NEGATIVE. THIS POD IS REQUIRED TO PROVIDE SUPPORT TO UNIT 9S.”

“Don’t be so stubborn. I want to get the stuff up there as soon as possible, but I also want to go poke my head in and make sure my spare parts are still there, and I don’t feel like climbing up there twice.” He pulled up the map and made a discreet marking followed by a hasty series of lines. “Here, this is the route I’m taking. Just hand it all off to Pod 042 and rendezvous with me when you’re done.”

“…AFFIRMATIVE.”

9S trotted off, sticking to his route as he said he would. It wasn’t far. He would be done before Pod 153 caught up to him.

The 9S model remained exactly where he left it and exactly how he left it. Silent and inactive, slumped in a dark corner wearing his old, torn up clothes. The urge to see it had come from nowhere as he collected water in the desert with events at the forest kingdom still fresh and stinging in his mind.The comfort of the underground lake had almost cleared those thoughts out entirely, and it wasn’t until he was close to seeing V again that the urge came back sharp and pressing.

As he stood before the thing that looked like him but wasn't, the pain returned. The shame. There was no reason for him to have been so cruel to someone who only tried to help him. Nothing meant anything, but Anthurium had chosen to be kind anyway. And he…hadn’t.

He lifted a fragment of the omnipresent concrete rubble and cracked it mercilessly against the model’s temple. It listed to the side, but accepted the punishment with no resistance or any change to its resting face. With no blindfold to staunch the flow, red lubricant spilled freely from the split skin, dripping from its chin and onto its jacket. 9S peeled the staunching gel from his own temple and carefully placed it over the bit of exposed endoskeleton

The wound wasn’t quite identical, so it didn’t fit properly. That was okay. The nanomachines would fix it.

When stepped back into the sunlight and carefully replaced the rubble, Pod was speeding up the street to meet him. He couldn’t help but laugh as she came to an abrupt stop at his side.

“You’re such a worry-wart, Pod.”

“NEGATIVE. THIS POD IS NOT FOR ERRANDS THAT NECESSITATE SEPARATION FROM ASSIGNED UNIT.”

“I get it, I get it.”

“ONE AFFIRMATION WILL SUFFICE.”

“Fiiine.” He trotted back toward the skyscraper. “That ladder is such a pain, though…”

Pod 042 had already put the torches to work and was hovering over the fire, ensuring the fish didn’t burn. Somehow he had absorbed a lot more about cooking than 9S and Pod 153.

V was leans up against Shadow, peacefully napping in the shade of one of the empty containers.

“He sure sleeps a lot…”

“RECORDS SHOW THAT OVEREXPOSURE TO INFORMATION TAXED HUMAN COGNITIVE ABILITY SIMILAR TO ANDROID PROCESSING OVERLOAD.” said Pod 153. “REPORT: IT IS BENEFICIAL FOR SUBJECT V TO TAKE FREQUENT BREAKS.”

“Hey Pod 042, how far did he make it?”

“REPORT: 4% OF INDICES SORTED. 87% OF DATA DEEMED IRRELEVANT.”

“That’s what I expected. It must be hard. He's going to be parsing for a week or two at this rate. And that’s before he even starts reading.”

Maybe he should help. But V was sleeping. And hadn’t divulged what he was basing his decision on for useful or not useful data.

A gentle bloom of contentment spread through him as V turned in his thin sleep, and he let it consume him. He had already made peace with the years this might all take. He would continue to provide material support until asked to do otherwise.

Let V take as long as he liked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure this extremely uncomfortable Dorian Gray-ing thing 9S is doing is fine.   
> Fun fact: This was not the intended purpose of that plot thread.


	17. Streams of Eden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 4: "If my days here will be long, I would spend them long and clean."

_My mind lets go a thousand things…like the dates and deaths…_

No, that wasn’t right.

V rubbed at his eyes. Progress was steady, but taxing on both his eyes and his mind. An influx of foreign information left his mind grasping for familiar thoughts. Old lines of poetry from his youth came to the surface but he could scarcely recall them properly.

He pushed his fingers up through his hair to sweep it out of his face. An unpleasant sensation lingered on his hand, and he regarded it with a scowl.

Familiar short-stride footsteps signaled 9S’ return from the oasis. They were still growing accustomed to one another, but two days of V’s attentiveness to his task had sown the beginnings of a routine. He announced himself and sat three replenished bottles on the table.

"Taking a break?" he asked.

"I wasn't planning on it," said V, wiping his hand gently on his coat. "But I think a few hours to take care of some other matters would serve me well."

"Other matters?" 9S repeated with a tilt of his head. "Did you find a lead?"

V shook his head and pinched his jacket primly between two fingers. "If my days here will be long, I would spend them long and clean."

The android’s face lit up from behind his blindfold. "I knew it. Humans do need to bathe."

"So we do…” He wasn’t sure of the source of 9S’ enthusiasm. Probably a conversation he’d had with his pod. “The pond nearby where all the streams gather would be perfect, but somehow I felt you would have an objection to my going there."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That it hasn't escaped my notice that you've kept me away from the southeast side of this city." He held up a hand before 9S could get too excited or defensive. "Your reasons don’t interest me. I have no cause to go there, so long as there are there are other options."

"Why not just go to the underground lake?” 9S offered. “It’s close, it’s quiet, and you could bathe and eat at the same time."

V took a deep, steadying breath. 9S’ prowess for noticing small details and coming to intelligent conclusions wasn’t to be downplayed, but his lack of common sense could be dazzling. “Do you truly not understand why it is repulsive to eat and bathe from the same pool?”

"It's not like it's standing water but I guess I get the avoidance...” He went quiet a moment, and shrugged toward the south. "Why not just head back to the coast?"

"The water there is foul, 9S."

“The amusement park is out too then... And the oasis is too much of a hassle…" 9S lifted himself onto the table and crossed his arms. “And I suppose you’re not willing to bath in any of the water in the pipes, huh?”

“Absolutely not.”

9S dropped his back and sighed dramatically. "You're so difficult, V."

Griffon's unexpected cackle interrupted any annoyance V might have shown at the suggestion. "You volunteered to help out too quick, boy-bot. V's a bit of a princess on account of being on the puny side."

"You keep saying that, but he keeps up with me alright."

Griffon’s beak spread open in a sneer, his triplicate eyes shining with wicked glee as he perched on the empty chair. "You hear that, V? You're on par with a metal runt that ain't made for combat."

V hooked the head of his cane inside Griffon's mouth, lifting it so he could neither extract himself nor speak. "You mentioned something about a forest kingdom before?" he continued casually with 9S.

"Y-yeah…” 9S stammered, shifting away from Griffon’s muffled curses and irate flapping. “It's probably the best thing for you. Clean, shallow water and lots of mountains." He shrugged. "I’ll take you, but I gotta warn you: It's dangerous."

"You said the same of the caves."

"The cave machines are strong because they're built strong. The forest machines are strong because they train."

V raised a brow. "You mean they aren't mindless."

"I mean they absorbed human records on monarchy and loyalty and they operate in large, coordinated and aggressive groups as knights on behalf of a dead king."

"In all times the weak worship the strong, it seems." V smirked off toward the horizon and released Griffon. A sharp flick rid the edge of saliva. "We can use the exercise. I will meet you there."

"I'm not going with you?"

"I have a more valuable use of your time than escorting me across a wasteland full of passive machines. You're going to find me something to wear." He beamed at Griffon and meticulously wiped the cane off on his feathers. "Something that doesn't stand out quite so much as my current clothes, ideally."

9S covered his mouth, but could still be heard snickering at Griffon's indignant expression. "Okay, you do stand out a lot. I'll see what I can do.” He darted to the edge of the roof with all his usual energy, pausing briefly for one last word: “Don't cross the ravine without me."

He jumped off the roof and V watches him float down on Pod 153 and trot off toward the southeast.

"Hey soda can," said Griffon. "How about you carry V awhile?"

"POSSIBLE," Pod 042 responded almost curiously, with a click of his claws.

V looked skeptically at the tiny mechanical vices on the end of the rods that formed the pod's arms and gently nudged it back with his cane. "Focus on leading the way."

"ALERT: RAVINE CROSSING LIES 9.4KM NORTH. TRAVEL TIME BASED ON SUBJECT V AVERAGE WALKING SPEED EXCEEDS 2 HOURS."

V held out his arm to Griffon and grinned. "I'm not walking."

* * *

 

V swiveled his hips with practiced ease as Shadow swerved beneath him to keep up with Pod 042.

They were keeping to the western side of town, weaving through alleys and between derelict vehicles on their journey north. The high, thin clouds blurred the light of the sun and gave the crumbling concrete and twisting trees a soft, dreamy quality. Passive yellow-white gazes followed them from the blank faces of the few machines they passed, and a few small animals darted into bushes or inside of cracks as they passed.

So much of his memory was filled with sites of fresh destruction, or of places still rotting and ashen. The freshly crumbled wreckage of the tower aside, the city ruins were thousands of years past their catastrophe. Emptiness was everywhere, but the specific quiet of abandonment was absent on the ground. V knew well the forlorn air of a ruined home. The ruins were more like a graveyard so long untended that the crumbled stones had ceased to be any different from the grasses that had overgrown them.

It was beautiful. Enough so that a rare nostalgia stirred in his heart and left no bitter remains in its wake.

 _Again the deadened bough shall bend, with blooms of sweetest breath…_  
_O miracle of miracles, this Life that follows Death…_

That one was right, he thought contently.

Wind fluttered through his hair and coat as they breached the city limits and emerged from the alleys into an open field. Remains of a raised highway and broken white blocks dotted the short grasses. On the other side, beyond something that may have once been a radio tower, the distinctive black shape of 9S awaited them.

9S seemed aware of V’s surprise to find him ahead of them. He held out a stack of haphazardly folded clothing and grinned cheekily. "What took you so long?"

"We took the scenic route." He accepted the clothes without giving the android the satisfaction of questioning him on just how fast he was. He looked to the bridge instead. "Is this crossable?"

"Yeah, it was actually reconstructed recently.” He patted the top layer of the pile. "Put the cloak on at least. We're going to be passing an outpost."

V shuffled the surprisingly breathable cloak on without protest, pulling it tightest around his body to cover his tattoos. As promised, the bridge was not nearly as heinous as it appeared, and the crossing was uneventful. The mall sparked faint interest. He knew of them, but he didn’t think he had ever actually been inside of one.

9S stopped beside a cascade that fell from some high cliff that had nestled up to the back end of the structure. "Are you sure you couldn’t just bathe in this?"

V gestured to the holes in the floor where the rushing falls had worn through the concrete and flood the lower level. "I appreciate your faith in my constitution, but it would only embarrass us both when I was invariably swept away by this current."

9S looked between the water and V and reached his hand into the current. It didn’t so much as budge him, but he didn't push the subject. He led them through the mall’s back entrance and out into what felt like a different world. A warmer one, with air thickened by a haze of pollen and humidity.

A stocky android in faded fatigues and a loose shirt that had long since ceased to be white nodded to 9S as the passed his camp. 9S gave a shy nod back before scurrying by.

They were alone after that, though the silence of the forest wasn’t so complete as that of the ruins. Birdsong and the hum of insects were omnipresent as they wandered through the mountains. V followed 9S along the myriad courses of babbling falls and broad streams until they finally arrived at a shallow pool. Aside from a few stray moose, it appeared to be empty.

V left 9S side immediately. The water was so clear he could see dozens of tiny, bottom-feeding fish dart out of his way as he waded in. He parted the limbs of a massive bent tree hanging low over the water and disappeared behind it. The water was just cool enough to be a welcome respite after the hike there. With cupped hands, he gently splashed his face, and shook off the cloak.

A hasty splashing closed in on him just as he unlaced his jacket. 9S parted the branches, and V threw the black coat over the android’s face with all the force in his lean body. He was rewarded with a sharp yelp and a loud splash.

"What was that for?!" 9S shouted over the sound of his soaked clothing spilling back into the water.

V parted the boughs enough for 9S to see the stern look on his face. "In case you weren't programmed with the vital human principle of privacy."

"I didn't think you'd be that fast,” 9S grumbled as he pulled himself out of the water. “We didn't even do a perimeter check."

The markings on his body shifted and thinned. Shadow materialized in on the bank. Her hidden markings swirled as red as her eyes, and she snuffed the air before padding out into the water with a satisfied chuff.

“She says it’s clear,” V said curtly. He hooked his jacket on his cane and the bough snapped back into place behind him.

He could hear 9S sigh heavily, but he paid him no mind. Soon enough Shadow had entangled him in some game and V was able to enjoy a measure of solitude as they played along the opposite bank.

Though the clothes he had arrived in weren’t technically his—nor were they to his taste for that matter—he gave them their due diligence first. It was odd. He had Vergil’s memories of doing something like this in his younger years, when being hunted meant long spans away from humanity, but it was the first time he himself had ever done such a thing. The waters he had sometimes gone to bathe in were colder. And there hadn’t been any such luxury as a companion like Shadow or a convenient android openly anxious to protect him.

Their play noise had quieted by the time V was done washing both the clothes and himself. He found a smooth stone to sit on, pressed the tip of his cane down into the streambed, and leaned his forehead against the handle. It felt good to let the water flow over him. To meld in with this strange place as part of the flowing stream. He cherished what he was, and who he was, but the delights of being no one, even if it was on an empty earth, were a heaven of their own.

Sparda didn’t exist there. Nor did the source of his nightmares. It all lived in him, and only in him. Just the bad dreams of a man he used to be.

He forced himself to stir and wobbled toward the bank. The clothes 9S had procured were similar to those of the android they’d passed. Cargo pants so faded their green was just a deep gray, and a white shirt with a gold insignia on it. He shrugged the pants on and wrapped the cloak around his shoulders. Once he was dry, he could finish, and they could be on their way. In the meantime, he pressed his back to a tree and whistled gently for Shadow.

She melted beneath the streambed and materialized in his lap. 9S followed shortly after, leaning over V with a perplexing grin on his face.

“What...?” asked V.

“You always seem to get sleepy when we go somewhere.”

V couldn’t find it in him to work up any indignance, or even mild irritation. Did he not have as much vitality as he thought? Or maybe he simply wasn’t used to pushing this body.

“Take a nap,” 9S suggested. “I’ll keep watch.”

V’s eyes fluttered closed. It might only have been a memory, or some illusory portion of a dream, but he thought he heard the toll of a bell echoing in the distance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poems in this chapter are not Blake, hence V's inability to remember them clearly. 
> 
> They are lines from the poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich--Specifically, from a collection of his untitled works called The Shadow of the Flowers.


	18. A Beautiful World, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 12: 9S teaches V about local areas of importance, and takes him somewhere special.

26 September 11945, 5:07 AM.

The hacking space remains pure white.

9S is diligent with his maintenance and organizes his memory regions again. It is a less painful task than before. The older memories he organized previously show signs of processing. With enough time, they will sublimate into the deeper archives of his personality core.

His recent memories of V are not as massive or overwhelming as the earlier ones. Their impact is lower, but they are all crisp and clear and they twinkle with 9S’ interest. Except one.

While it is a small and quiet, V's casual remark about the human need for privacy echoes over and over again. The memory did not strike 9S any particular way at the time of its creation. It is the processing that has made an impression on him.

He has no memory of privacy in YoRHa. There was no well-known prohibition against it as there was with emotion. It was just a given that everything was monitored. Even communications from the Commander could be deleted if the filters decided so.

9S recognizes that most of what happened outside of his own mind while he was a soldier had never truly been his own. He does not resent this, but it does fill him with profound loneliness. He is certain he is not the only one who was anxious and frightened by existing. But none of them could reveal such a thing, so they had all suffered alone. For nothing. Or for V. A single human whose primary concern was to leave.

Anger heats like a breathing creature inside of 9S. He easily cools it.

The strain of his opposing feelings has not lessened, but the chronic nature of this problem has dulled the ache. He is familiar with what it means to love and hate someone at the same time. V, at least, has never done him any harm.

9S wrestles unease at that thought. He sorts memories where V occasionally shows a warm or playful side, but those moments are never unintentional. The more 9S replays them, the more certain he becomes that they are a conscious act. He has not glimpsed beneath the surface of V yet. Even when he smiles, he is aloof. Unknowable. V is good at keeping what is in his heart to himself, and 9S’ unease grows.

Is there anything that truly binds them together?

His programming tells him that being useful to V is enough, but the pieces of him that are most irrevocably his own twist in agony.

V's existence gives 9S cause to live. With living came the shameful desire to continue living. No matter how carefully 9S keeps the reality of V’s death in his mind, something must fill the space between then and now. And 9S knows intimately that he fears living in solitude above all else.

He does not want to help V leave. He does not want to share V. 

He wants to know if humans were really gods worth dying for in the first place.

He wants to know everything, everything, everything about V.

* * *

 

**_\--S… 9S?_ **

9S snapped his head up to find V looming over him. "Sorry," he blurted. "I was checking up on something in my memory data. What's up?"

V gestured to Pod 042. "REPORT: SUBJECT V HAS PARSED 90% OF TOTAL INDICES. THIS POD PROPOSES A DAY OF REST."

"Shouldn't he rest _after_ he's done?"

"The end of a difficult task is where one is most likely to become complacent," V said with an approving pat on the pod's shell. "Returning refreshed will ensure I make the final push with the appropriate attention to detail."

9S bobbed his head along. That didn’t make sense to him, but he let it slide.

"I guess that means you want to do something refreshing…?" He wasn't well-versed at finding fun things to occupy time off. Downtime on earth was traditionally for repairs and planning the next steps of an operation.

"I want to know more about this place," V answered. "It's possible I may find leads I wish to follow."

"You know I'd take you anywhere you wanted to go."

"You may not always be with me, 9S."

The words weren't spoken mean-spiritedly, but they squeezed at 9S regardless. He maintained a casual smile. "True, I guess. Will you at least not go anywhere dangerous without me?"

"I can't say you've taken me anywhere dangerous as of yet," V gloated with a wide grin.

"Ooof," 9S groaned, embarrassed on his own behalf. Was that how his model sounded? "That doesn’t instill confidence. If you approach a goliath class unit with that attitude you’re going to end up dead."

V planted his cane and did his best to look more modest. "I know my limits well, 9S. A fox does not try to live the life of the lion."

9S was only passingly familiar with those animals. They appeared in a lot of the human fables he had been reading from Pod 153's archive up on to try and better understand V--or more accurately, to better understand some the things that came out of V's mouth--but he more or less understood what V was trying to say.

“If you say so…”  


* * *

 

9S hopped up the ladder to the very top of the defunct Engels unit. V was already there waiting for him with Griffon on his arm. If it was anything more than a short walk or a modest climb, he tended to avoid using his own body to travel. It worried 9S a little, as it was likely bad for V to be that sedentary, but he didn’t hold that against him. If the pods could lift him as easily as Griffon lifted V, he would never use a ladder either.

Their view wasn't as grand as at the top of the skyscraper but being closer to the ground made it a lot easier to see the important landmarks.

He gestured west first, across the empty field. “See that broken bridge? That leads to the factory. A lot of the machines in this area came from in there. Probably still do. Once you go in far enough there’s just conveyor belts churning them out.”

“And were I to go in, would these freshly made machines be like these—” He jabbed his cane toward the stubbies on the ground, milling about as though they were perpetually confused. “Or like the variety in the caves?”

“I don’t really know. There’s no network so I guess…it must depend on the machine.” He shuffled uncomfortably. He hadn’t given any thought to what newly manufactured machines might be like now. “It’s a place I think you would be alright, but if I’m honest… I don’t like the idea of you going in there.”

V gave him an expectant look, and he self-consciously rubbed at his arm. “I know it must sound illogical, but I think that place is probably cursed.”

To his surprise, V didn’t scoff. It was Griffon who did so. “A superstitious android. I can tell everyone we really did see it all when we get back.”

V waved a hand for silence. “You don’t strike me as the type to use such a word lightly. What brings you to such a conclusion?"

“A prophet machine appeared there. When he died, his followers went berserk.” The memory was hazy. So much had happened there, and there was a great deal of noise between then and now. But he remembered the words he heard in the moon server. “ _O grant me the mercy of the land. O grant me the joy of the heavens. Release me from my yoke of iron. Thus, shall our souls be saved…_ Those machines, they thought.. _._ ”

From the corner of his eye, he could see V staring at him. Appraising him with such open scrutiny that it made the blindfold feel invisible. He brushed his coat off and hurriedly turned his back on the bridge. “Doesn't matter what they thought. They’re all dead now.”

“Takes a load off my mind,” Griffon mumbled.

For once, 9S was grateful for the blue eagle’s all-inclusive irreverence. He pointed east to a sunlit field visible on the other side of the shadows between the leaning skyscrapers. "That pond you were considering over there? The Resistance Camp is right underneath that broken bit of road on the far side of it.”

“Which is why you’ve kept me away from that area…” guessed V. “Are they hostile?”

"No. They’re allies and they've been… really good to me."

He lapsed into silence as he thought of Anemone. She hadn't looked at him any differently, and Jackass treated him as unscrupulously as ever. But after his disturbing experience at the coliseum, he wondered how long that would that last.

"...9S?"

"Huh? Oh, sorry." He smiled as warmly as he could manage. "They’re not hostile but…well, you read the machine report. I don’t really think meeting a lot of androids would be safe for you. They’re dealing with finding out the truth, so they might be unpredictable."

"Like you were?"

9S resisted the urge to correct his tense and nodded quietly. He was perfectly predictable with V. It was others he couldn’t keep an even temper with.

“There were only a few hundred YoRHa, but there are millions of androids on the planet serving in the Army of Humanity. I don’t know what will happen to you if the commanders get wind of a living human after all of this.”

Griffon fluttered his wings. “Sounds like they’d make a king outta him. Can you imagine, V? Your own personal army.”

“I can indeed imagine,” V murmured darkly. “And it doesn’t impress me.”

“There is a second reason you might not want to get too close,” said 9S. He gestured between his dark clothing and and V’s, hidden as it was beneath the faded tawny cloak. "You look like a YoRHa unit."

* * *

9S struggled to hold in laughter at V’s progress down the sewer ladder. It was too narrow for him to drift down with Griffon, and he didn’t seem to trust Pod 042 with the task, so for once he had to deal with it himself. He was reasonably fast, but his gangly limbs gave him the look of a spider scuttling down.

“Was there any reason,” he asked as he reached the bottom and stepped into the podlight. “That we did not just fly over that barrier?”

“I thought it would ruin the surprise.” He smiled. Though he didn’t have good memories, he did think of the next destination as something that would get an interesting reaction out of V. “This way.”

When he invariably led them to a second ladder, V shot him a tight-lipped glare. “We’re flying when we go back.”

9S laughed. V could be as finicky as a child—though he preferred to be called ‘particular’—and was full of odd behaviors, but the more 9S learned about humans, the less he could blame him. If V was to be taken as the example, humans were adaptable and easy-going, but delicate. It was hard to maintain an image of him as some haughty higher existence when he fell asleep almost instantly if he sat down anywhere out of the sun.

As soon as they reached the surface, a burst of fireworks lit the darkly clouded sky, bathing the both of them in violet light. V’s eyes widened, and he followed 9S through the turnstiles and into the dim plaza filled with dazzling, festive lights.

For once, it seemed he had no clever remarks to make.

9S’s chest puffed with satisfaction. “Welcome to the amusement park.”


	19. A Beautiful World, Part 2

V remained speechless longer than 9S thought he would. They were past the turnstiles and into the plaza before a shambling machine in a tattered jester cap snapped him out of his trance. 

Mangled outer plating revealed the metal teeth and complex arrangements of metal and mesh-work beneath. It showed no aggression, but one of its eyes still occasionally flickered red. A mechanical problem most likely, some frayed wire or partially fried component sparking to life at random.  
  
"Ww-w-eeeelll--" it called in a distorted voice. “--coooooome.”  
  
On the edge of his vision, V shifted his grip on his cane to its familiar read position. 9S gently held his arm out and pushed both of them back out of its path. It shuffled right by them, tossing confetti with merry energy that didn't match its appearance.

"What… was that?"  
  
"These machines emulate records of human fun," 9S explained. "They'll defend themselves if you attack, but they don't want to fight." 

It felt like a hundred years ago that he had first seen the amusement park and had V’s same reaction. Even when they were whole, their behavior had been so strange to him. They had been utterly irrelevant when he'd last been there. Invisible to him in his rage as he entered the God Box and invisible when he awakened to find it, and his Operator, destroyed.

Looking at them now, he couldn’t help but feel pity. " When the tower formed, a lot of machines in the area were infected with a wide area virus. It’s why a lot of the forest machines sound the way they do. The virus disappeared with the tower but…it leaves a lot of damage behind."  
  
Another machine, in slightly better condition, greeted them as they approached the main stairway. With great effort, it held up a single shiny earring to V.

"Thaaa—nk...c-c-us..tom-mer…"

9S watched V stare at the offering without any move to take it. The cool demeanor he was accustomed to was marred by a single deep crease in his brow. 

"It’s okay. They'll fix themselves in time."

V nodded but remained quiet.

Rather than continue to offer reassurance, 9S let the subject drop and proceeded further in. He was mystified. They had already passed through a lot of the south end of the city ruins together; V regularly stepped over bodies of androids and machines alike as though they were no different from bits of rubble lying in the street. That callous attitude of his was what 9S was banking on. So where had it gone?

Maybe it was a human thing. To 9S, the amusement park was the only thing that gave him any reason to think things might be okay. He even spied a few new machines among the ranks of the parade on the central boulevard. Their caps were clean, and their painted-on smiles were freshly applied, though just as crooked as ever. Cheery melodies rang out in their atrocious voices, but their singing had never been very good to begin with. 

9S envied their simplicity. How could they ever fail, if their goal was just to have fun?

As they came to the blocked bridge and the cluttered remains of the god box rose in front of them, V finally broke his silence. "What's this?"

"It was a part of the tower," 9S explained, more brusquely than he intended. "An external resource unit that gathered up a bunch of junk parts."  
  
"…Why would it gather junk parts?"  
  
9S shrugged. "Told you, there's no meaning to what machines do."  
  
“I am growing to suspect…” V began, leaning forward over 9S so heavily that the point of his cane sank deep into the cobblestones. "That when you say those words, they are more for your sake than for mine.”

A foot slid back to prepare 9S for evasion. It was motor memory at this point, but he caught himself and stubbornly refused to back down. “Their behaviors aren't self-aware. It's just random repetition."

“The formation of a monarchy, then a cult, and now a circus cannot be taken as random actions, even if they are born of imitation."

“Human history is varied. There’s plenty of options for data to replicate. They parrot what they discover with no deviation. Even if they fail at it. Over. And over. And over.”

Something flicked through V’s eyes. A peek of bitterness that 9S couldn’t understand. “Even the humiliations of failure are not enough to deter a being that has chosen its purpose.”

"Purpose…?" 9S asked tightly. "What purpose? You read the report. Did you not get it? Their purpose was to kill androids. They were made for it, and they were good at it. They started stalling at 80% control of the planet thousands of years ago. This cheap imitation of humans? Began maybe a few hundred years ago as far as we can tell. This was all just an elaborate way for them to waste time so they wouldn’t kill us all and void their purpose. But now there’s no network and the self-made defects are all that's left. They don’t have a purpose, V. "

9S only grew more incensed when V looked at him with something like disappointment. “If you have something to say, **say it**.”

V raised an eyebrow at him and gave a slow, thoughtful twist of his cane in his grip. Several times 9S noticed him pause on the grip he usually reserved for combat. He turned to head back down the stairs. “It would only waste time. Let’s move on to the next location.”

9S immediately dashed to block his path.

It was a mistake. The thought flashed like a bulb over and over in his mind. Who was he to get so aggressive with a human? But he couldn’t help it. A thousand jumbled thoughts of himself, the machines, their idiotic quests for destruction of themselves and everything else and the useless, unlosable happiness of the amusement park swirled in his mind like a suffocating miasma. He could give V passes for anything else, but not this. Not when he was staring down his nose at 9S with that expression that he hated so much. If he had an answer that made all of it finally make sense, 9S thought he might even be willing to fight him for that.

“You’re the human,” 9S grated. “So, if you’ve got some tidy explanation, I’d love to hear it.”

“ _Dip him in the river who loves water._ You insist on ignoring the obvious, so figure it out on your own.”

“Have you considered that it’s not obvious to me? The last Machine War started 5 years ago! I wasn’t even made, and the Terminals already knew everything and had their hands in everything.”

“Terminals?” V asked, curiosity finally cracking his increasing aura of detachment.

“The Red Girls. The ones mentioned in the machine report. They wanted..." 9S grew quiet. His shoulders tensed and he crossed his arms tight over his body. More than anything, he hated thinking of N2. Speaking their names made it all come back so vividly. "Who knows what the hell they wanted. All they ever did was mess with us. Treating YoRHa like toys, because they knew from the start it was all pointless."

"You speak as though you met them yourself.”

In that instant, 9S mind cleared of the rising feeling that V was also toying with him. He had assumed V would have put it together by now. To think he hadn't...Maybe it wasn't that odd that he was being so cold. The urge to let him go on without knowing rushed to the front of 9S’ mind, but there was a glimmer of hope that he couldn't ignore. The desire to be understood, and to understand whatever V did about the nature of purpose, was a deafening roar. His fears, his doubts, and even his anger were forced to step aside.

He took a deep breath and got out of V’s way, hoisting himself up onto a ledge and gently swinging his legs.

"I did,” he said calmly. “I met N2. They gave me most of those top secret YoRha files you read. Not out of kindness, mind you. It seemed…like just the opposite.” His stomach turned uncomfortably, and he had to look away from the remains of the recovery unit. “They wanted me to suffer for some reason, and they used the truth to do it.”

V's eyes regarded him without change, steady on his face before drooping closed. "I see. That explains much about you."  
  
"I didn't mean to hide it; I thought you knew already so it just...didn't seem like it mattered."

"Very little seems to matter to you." V leaned back against a wall on the opposite end of the avenue. "But you're a poor liar. Were any of it actually so, you wouldn't take nearly so much care to hide your nature from me."

The noise of the parade swelled between them, and they stared at one another over the heads of the carelessly frolicking machines.

"So what if I do?” 9S barked the moment they were alone again. “That smug smile you wear around is no different. I haven't got a clue what's really on your mind."  
  
"I am in your world," V said, with the exact kind of oily, infinitely unlikable smile 9S meant. "Not the other way around. If I have my way, I will leave as quietly as I arrived and disturb nothing."  
  
"You already disturbed _me_."   
  
"Your disturbance goes much deeper than my presence."  
  
"Can you stop being a smart ass for five seconds?” he snapped. “You don't know anything about me or what I was doing before. You didn't ask to be here, but I didn't ask for you to come either."

By the slight jerk of V’s head, it may have been the first thing 9S has said that truly got through to him. He planted his cane between his feet and settled both hands on the handle, his gaze serious and attentive, if still a little arrogant.

"What _are_ you asking for, then?"

Heat rushed to 9S face. The fight, if it had been one, was over and V had gotten right to the heart of the problem, leaving 9S feeling awkward. Maybe even as difficult and demanding as he had accused V of being. The things he wanted when he brought V there suddenly felt small and stupid, and his base longing felt no better. He was so used to having to keep secrets and deploy complicated gambits just to keep one step ahead. With V, at least as far as it concerned their working relationship, there wasn’t really any need for that, was there?

V had done him no harm, and some deep place inside 9S that even he didn’t know was there unknotted with the realization that he wouldn’t. He had his own business and no reason to cut 9S down. Not even if he expressed doubts, or was brazen, or asked too many questions.

“I just want to know you better…” he admitted, mortified by how childish it sounded. "I'm a scanner, I get curious. It’s frustrating to not understand things, especially when you could answer my questions so easily. I don’t even know what the deal with Shadow or that bird is yet. I could be of more use if I knew more about you.”

A smile flashed, and a mild laugh followed. “You would benefit from following your Pod's example and being more direct. What do you propose?”

“Well, I want you to know me a little better too so… How about... I dunno, I ask you questions, and you ask me one you think is equivalent. If I don't answer, you don't answer. That way neither of us has to say anything we don’t want to." V’s cheer dulled to an almost pained squint and 9S frowned. “What…? Bad idea?

He shook his head and started back down the stairs. "No, just amazed how little things change… Ten thousand years in the future and I'm being asked to play 20 questions."

9S hopped down from his ledge and took off after him, bright-eyed beneath his blindfold.. "Humans did this kind of thing as a game? Must have been for socialization, right? Is twenty the traditional limit? Oh—shit, those don’t count do they?"

V held up a hand. “I will waive them and agree to this only on the condition that we move on. Agreed?”

“Are you sure? It looks like the roller coaster is intact, so it should still be functional. Pod told me humans liked roller coasters.”

V’s eyes glazed over so thoroughly that 9S thought he might not actually know what a roller coaster was. Before he could ask if he was alright, an astonishingly sour look scrunched V’s face into a hundred wrinkles of disgust. He looked like he had stepped barefoot into a pile of boar dung. 9S hadn’t even thought V was capable of being that expressive.

“I don’t like roller coasters,” he growled. “Let’s go.”

9S would have loved to ask for the obvious story there, but he had to be a little more selective if he only had twenty.

He followed after the endlessly frustrating and endlessly interesting human, stifling laughter all the way.


	20. A Curious World, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The City Ruins tour continues from V's perspective.

The strange twilight around the amusement park gave way to bright daylight once they flew over the barricade and landed back in the city proper.

Behind V, 9S was quiet but bright-faced, most likely deciding on priority for his questions. He seemed like exactly the type to fire off all 20 in a row. Even though they promised some keep information about his host, V was weary of the next few hours already,

"Let’s start with the obvious since you wouldn’t tell me before," said 9S, skipping ahead to resume his role as guide. "What’s with your support units and those tattoos?"

A simple question, deserving of a simple equivalent. "Why are the pods so much more knowledgeable than you?”

"My ability to process information is top of the line but my storage is still limited. Keeping a big archive of old world data would only bog me down. It's not like I need that stuff to fight or for intel gathering."

Magic made more sense to V than technology. From his first day with Pod 042, he had begun to think of the pods as though they were just highly sophisticated familiars. 9S, meanwhile, resided in an uncanny place where he was more or less human until he showed his stellar lack of common sense or said something about his inner workings. "Pod, if you would?"

"AFFIRMATIVE. SUPPORT UNITS GRIFFON AND SHADOW ARE FAMILIARS. MARKINGS ON SUBJECT V’S BODY SIGNIFY CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATION BETWEEN PARTIES AND APPEAR ONLY WHEN FAMILIARS ARE INACTIVE."

"What the heck's a--" 9S slapped a hand over his lips before he could complete the question. "That doesn't count!"

"Of course," V said diplomatically.

9S repeated the question quietly to his pod. "What's a familiar?"

"REPORT:” said Pod 153. “OLD WORLD DATA MATCH FOR 'FAMILIAR': A DEMON WHICH ATTENDS TO A WITCH, OFTEN TAKING THE FORM OF AN ANIMAL."

"A witch... Wait, wait a minute! Why did Pod 042 know already?!"

"That counts. Why do _you_ know what a witch is?"

9S bashfully adjusted the straps of his pack as they came to the bridge leading to the mall and the forest kingdom beyond. "I've uh...been reading old human fables while you've been working on the index. I thought it might help me understand you a little better."

V watched with amused interest, but 9S didn't blush. Perhaps that was a left out of his otherwise convincing human functionalities. "An adorably diligent effort.”

"Sh...shut up... Just answer my question."

"It came up as part of a deal."

"What kind of deal?"

"That... is between Pod 042 and me," V answered. "Your question is denied. We are at two."

Pouting, 9S led them across the bridge. "I thought all witches were... uhm... female."

V didn't bother answering that. Nothing good would come of it, and his attention had wandered to a very different looking barricade off to the far right, nestled between the edge of the ravine and a derelict office building. Derelict construction beams in a sun-faded and dust-coated red were bent and mangled into approximately the right shape, even if it meant some of them were jammed directly into the cement. Ahead of him, 9S was mumbling his way to his next question—something about how V being a witch explained his combat abilities—totally unaware that V was no longer directly behind him.

"How did you learn to be a witch?" 9S called.

V pointed his cane toward the red mass and called back: "Why aren't we going that way?"

Silence answered him, followed by the the slow, rhythmic tap of 9S's footsteps as he came back to V's side.

"There was a village that way once.” He crossed his arms and leaned over the suspension ropes, his chin resting on his forearms. "A bunch of pacifist machines, living between the amusement park and the forest kingdom. The virus must have gotten to them. It's all just burnt husks now. Only Pascal is left--their leader. One of the first machines we could trust. As an ally, I mean. And he... doesn’t remember anything. Not me, not the village, or even his name. I thought it'd be best to leave him alone.”

While 9S was lost in his wistful thoughts, V's own thoughts grew bitter and he gripped his cane against the uncomfortable prickle on his skin and the phantom scent of cold ash in his nose. He had expected much simpler and much less familiar answer. Though it intrigued him that it was the first time 9S had avoided something without V’s safety as the cause for doing so, he would be perfectly content to never go there.

"My mother was a witch," he said tersely. "My abilities likely stem from her. You will have to cope with any curiosity you have about her on your own. I have no intention to speak of her to you."

"...I understand," 9S said softly.

The tinge of unaffected sympathy in his voice brought the doting smile as 2B uttered her last breath fresh to V’s mind. He scattered the thought. No matter how invasive a question 9S asked him, he would not bring her up, or reveal that he so much as knew her name.

"...Can I ask about your dad?"

"There isn't much to tell of him. His legacy is all I can recollect."

"You didn't ask me anything back?"

"You asked for permission, not information.” V strolled by to finish their crossing, leaving 9S to catch up to him. “That's three.”

The storefronts all covered in vines and moss and the green-tinted light lent a garden-like tranquility to the mall that gave V pause. He liked the heights of the skyscraper as a safe place. No one ever came up there, and it offered him an excellent view of the city as well as a place out of the sun on the occasions it showed itself through the clouds. But he was becoming aware that it was somewhat inconvenient as well. There was no place to hide, should it come to that. The only avenue of escape if someone other than 9S crept up there was to jump down into the extremely open and unprotected skyline. Jumping from the north side meant flat, equally unprotected terrain, west meant a risky leap into unstable debris, and east meant first making it over the empty shipping containers and then closing the distance between himself and the resistance camp.

The cooking smoke alone was going to eventually give away that there was activity up there...

The mall wasn't ideal either. Forest kingdom machines frequently found their way in despite the outpost. But maybe there were unexplored options—like the elevator door set into the bottom of one of the vast tree’s sprouting from a pile of rubble.

"Where does that go?"

**"Nowhere."**

They both stopped in their tracks, mutually stunned by the quick, emotionless, and far too instant answer.  V was beyond caring if 9S lied to him, as he so frequently did by omission, but he had never heard him lie so reflexively that it betrayed the truth. 

"The point of exchanging equivalent questions was to avoid lies, was it not?"

"Yeah." His chest visibly bobbed with deep but silent breaths. Could an android hyperventilate? "Sorry, I—I don't want to talk about it."

“Why are we headed to the forest kingdom?” V offered.

“Huh? Uh… The castle. There’s a big castle further in.” The simple question had the desired effect: 9S’ relaxed. “It’s where I found the wine bottles. The tower fall wrecked a lot of the infrastructure so I don’t think we should go in, but I figure we can get a good view of it at least. Wait, did that count?”

“No, it was a practical question about our destination. Nothing more.”

Again they passed the friendly android on their way in to the forest kingdom and again 9S rushed by.

It wasn't any business of his, but the game was still on, so he pressed out another question. "Why are you so embarrassed of that man?"

9S opened his mouth, but he seemed to have some difficulty deciding on an appropriate counter-question. Finally, he blurted out, "Why don't you like roller coasters?!"

In some corner of his being, V could feel Griffon let loose an explosive cackle. He reminded himself that he need not answer the question, but at the same time, burning through silly questions just to end this silly game quicker was a reasonable tactic.

"My brother liked roller coasters," he muttered sourly. "When we were children, he convinced me to board the biggest roller coaster at a park over and over again despite my protests." His face darkened, and he rubbed at the deep wrinkle in his brow. "Until I vomited."

9S stood stone still, trying valiantly but ineffectually to look like he wasn't going to laugh even as his cheeks puffed out with the effort of holding it in.

"That's four," said V, with a dignified glare that dared 9S to actually laugh .

9S nodded wordlessly, covering his mouth and taking deep breaths to keep his childish glee contained. "That guy," he began, patting his chest for composure. "His name is Anthurium. He gave me the new pack and was nice to me. …Even though I snapped at him." V couldn’t tell exactly what expression 9S was making beneath his blindfold. It was too complicated for even his expressive nature to relay. "He wanted to throw a big feast for humanity when the war was over. But obviously he's given that up."

V tapped his cane against his chin. "Do you think he has salt?"

_"…What?"_

"Salt. Your fishing efforts are appreciated, but simple roasted fish is a bland meal to subsist on."

"Wow, what a bratty thing to say. Salt isn’t free you know.”

“You border the ocean and salt is a luxury?”

“Salt is a corrosive! Why do you think all the machines here are so rusty? Boil your food in salt water if it’s so bland to you." He hopped over a massive, winding root with a huff. “It sure doesn't look bland the way you gobble it down…"

There wouldn’t have been time to contest that even if V wanted to. The forest kingdom was active today. No matter how they directed their efforts toward stealth or preserving their stamina, the machines were everywhere. Their harsh voices were less broken—new machines with new speakers to blow out had replenished their hostile numbers. 9S led them toward the canyon and up a high cliff where they were safely out of reach by the screaming ranks of machine knights. From the rocky peaks, the castle stood in the distance as castles did, faded by mists and distance, large and old and susceptible to such things as city-sized towers collapsing onto them. A single intact spiral of tower debris jutted up from inside of it like a strange and alien tooth biting into the bones of the weathered stone.

They took a moment to rest in the shade of a massive tree with an ominous black chain around it. A suspiciously empty altar lay inside its hollowed trunk, and a strange doll was nailed to the bark higher than even V could reach. V could not make out any of its features, only that rust the color of ancient blood had stained the front of the doll and the bark beneath it. 

Faintly, over the sound of the rushing waterfall, a bell tolled soft and solemn.

"Where is this...?"

"Nowhere special," said 9S. "I found a weapon here before so I knew it was a safe place to stop."

"You have more than the sword?" V asked reflexively.

"What's your third summon?" 9S countered with a grin.

V smiled, and took the consequence of his hasty ask on the chin. "My strongest and the one bound most closely to my will. Nightmare."

"No I mean like--Is it a fish or something?"

V lifted his head from the ground and squinted at 9S. "A fish? No. Like his namesake, Nightmare’s form is most... indescribable."

"Indescribable..." 9S repeated in an awed whisper. He rose from his resting squat and swapped out to the other weapon he kept at the ready: A simple-looking spear with interesting but nonsensical tribal patterns all along the shaft. "This is my other main weapon, but I have maybe eighteen."

V tilted his head, and sat up. "You didn't strike me as the weapon collecting type. You’re not a combat model."

"I'm not—either of those. It just sort of happened. Some of them were given to me as payment for errands, and a lot of them were in chests that could only be opened via hacking. And since I can hack..."

A perfectly sensible and pragmatic answer, for once. But something bothered V. "Switch back to the sword."

Without even asking why, 9S obediently swapped. It was instantaneous. The spear vanished from his hand in a flurry of golden flecks of light and the sword materialized on his back, suspended by the same golden ring that 9S duplicated in order to wield the weapons in combat.

"How do your weapons work exactly?"

9S' face brightened, and he almost hopped into it without bothering to offer a counter question. "How does that stuff you do with your cane work?"

"Magic," V answered flatly. When he saw 9S' disappointed frown, he smiled. "I don't mean to be evasive, but it truly is as simple as that. Copies of it, made with my magic, and--" He ran his hand over the length of the cane, casually imbuing and removing the violet glow. "A coating of my magic to allow me to pierce what strength alone would not."

"You really are a witch, huh..."

Griffon was tickled by it, but V found the thought as endearing as it was bittersweet. Perhaps with only trace remnants of his demonic heritage running through him, he was primarily the son of a witch.

9S made himself comfortable. "I promise I'll answer the thing about the weapons, but I can't wait, it's been bugging me since I first saw you use it: Is the cane special or something? Like a wand?"

"No, it’s just a cane I found in an antique shop. What about your sword? I notice none of the YoRHa corpses we’ve passed have blades like yours."

9S faltered. He seemed more confused than disturbed as he called the sword to his hand and stared at it. A crooked frown rose to his lips. "I don't...remember." Maybe he felt V's curious eyes on him. "I'm sorry, I really don't.” He smiled crookedly and a small, shrill laugh escaped him. "It must have been… a lifetime ago."

"...Are you alright?"

He plastered on a weak, faulty smile, but V didn't think it was for him this time. It lacked that fawning, submissive quality V had grown used to. He looked more like a scared child clutching a security blanket.

"I'm okay," he said carefully. "Just... don't think I ever thought about it before. Anyway, I owe you an answer.”

The answer was as frighteningly in-depth as V suspected it would be. A near-field combat system controlled YoRHa interactions with their weaponry. (The far-field system was for pod control and more or less enabled 9S to control pod combat abilities with his mind). There was some complicated mechanism that allowed solid weapons to move between matter states as either physical objects or as data, but the data was apparently not alterable. Meaning, in short, it was possible for weapons to break and require physical repair before they would be whole again. And apparently the golden rings were some kind of electromagnetic field that bound the weapon and android together?

9S was patient and took it slow, but it was like trying to understand the finer points of how that woman took demon parts and made devil breakers from them. It was exactly the same, in V’s mind. Otherworldly energy bent to the will of machinery. Some of the weapons were clearly ancient relics, and undoubtedly had some kind of magic in them that androids accessed or processed by refining and restoring them. It was the only thing that made that primitive-looking spear’s supposed ability to re-write machines to become allies make any sense.

“Anything else you want to know?” 9S said brightly.

“No. I’m sure you will go into infinite detail if I only ask, but it’s unnecessary. What you have described is magic.”

“Huh?! But I just…! V It’s not magic, it’s technology.”

V held up his palm. The tattoos on his chest shifted and dulled, and a tiny vision of Shadow spun in his hand. “To an android, circuitry and systems. To me, tattoos. It is clear to me that we, and even the machines, manipulate the same element, but by different means.”

9S’ eyes widened beneath this visor. “You think it’s the same thing, but with a different interface… I see, I get it!”

He looked like he was fit to burst with either pride or excitement, to the point that even V had to smile as he stood. “Though I’ve learned much, the trek has been long and I am reaching my limit.”

“Okay. I’ll split with you at the mall to pick up more supplies and meet you back on the rooftop.”

They followed the curve of the cliff together, neither one eager to hop down and be faced with the numerous machines again. The breeze was warmer than V would have liked, but refreshing enough and 9S questions run out, for now. Perhaps he had talked himself out in explaining his weapons or was busy with thoughts of procuring food and water.

They were at seven. Perhaps he could tease them toward eight. "Why do the forest machines toll that bell?"

9S tilted his head, and V did not need to see his eyes to know his expression was blank and confused beneath the blindfold.

"What bell?"


	21. A Curious World, Part 2

Exhaustion forgotten, V stood before the waterfall and cupped his ears.

“It’s getting louder. Do you hear it?”

“I still don’t—“

“He was talking to _me_ ,” Griffon snipped, extending a wing to brush 9S back and shuffling closer to V. “I hear something alright but it ain’t bells. I don’t think even a demon would sound like the shit I’m hearing, and honestly I don’t think it’s a great plan to be going toward it.  Ain’t a lot that can rub me the wrong way, but even the big guy was getting a little agitated here.”

“Be that as it may, this may be the clue we were looking for. We must proceed.”

Griffon sighed. “Yeah I thought you’d say that; just don’t get in over your head. Let boy-bot take the first swing if it comes to that.”

V glanced back at 9S. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot and rolling his heels. His head jerked at every stray splash and snapped twig and screaming machine in the distance, but he could not pick up what they were hearing.

“I prefer not to wander blindly," said V. "Is there anything that would have a bell nearby? Even a damaged one.”

9S opened a digital map with a flick of his fingers. Half a dozen other sub-screens joined it, displaying waves and charts that made little sense to V, but 9S manipulated them deftly. The map zoomed in, for what good it did the rough, highly pixelated image. “There’s a sub-structure of some kind to the north of the castle. Pod, do you have any record of it?”

“REPORT,” whirred Pod 153. “NO DATA FOUND IN ARCHIVES. HOWEVER, QUERY TO CROSS-REGIONAL POD NETWORK RETURNED THIS IMAGE FOUND AT THE SITE SEVERAL YEARS PRIOR.”

V moved to 9S side and stared at the remnants of a stained glass window. The glass had long since melted away under the onslaught of the sun, but the bars retained their shape.

The image of a three eyed face whitened V’s knuckles. It couldn’t possibly be… No. It wasn’t one face. It was two faces. They were melded together as one, sharing the center eye. There were even two bars between the eyes to signify separate noses.

He let out a shaking breath, and only then noticed 9S had gotten just as tight as he had. “Do you know this symbol?”

“…Do you?” he asked, gesturing to V’s still tight grip on his cane.

V took another deep breath and switched the cane to his other hand. “I thought I did, but no.”

“That’s eight...” 9S said in a painfully weak attempt to lighten the mood. “We killed a machine that had that symbol on it once. I don’t know what it is, or what it means. He was the only being I ever saw have tattoos until you.”

“You’re  _sure_  he was only a machine?”  

“Yeah. I watched him and his brother be born from this big cocoon of small machines.” He shrank the image down, holding it in the palm of his hand. “They were machines obsessed with humanity too. Maybe this is where they found that symbol.”

Griffon rumbled, and V shared his disquiet. Something wasn’t right. But it was all they had to go on.

“Let’s make haste.”

* * *

  
The trees were forbiddingly dense beyond the castle’s north side. Twisted roots as thick as V was tall intertwined along the forest floor, making their journey more one of leaping and climbing than walking. The lush canopy was pocked with white blocks that bent but did not break the mesh of branches they had fallen into. Machine presence had faded away to nothing in the difficult terrain and suffocating humidity.

When they arrived at their destination, V was ragged with exhaustion.  The trek was hard enough, but the once solemn, distant toll had grown to deafening peals.

“You don’t look so good,” 9S fretted. He offered V the last, half-full full bottle. “Rest for a minute. I’ll scout it out.”

The remains were smaller than V thought they would be. Like wilted, blackened flowers, the old stone arches curled toward the sky above the modest clearing. The raised foundation was intact, as were the four cobblestone steps leading to the threshold. Very little of the walls remained, mostly just the bits around the cornerstones and the one stretch of wall where the frame of the stained glass window remained, just as they had seen it.

He poured water over his face and drank the rest. The restlessness of his familiars resonated just as deeply as the incessant bell.  They saw it just as he did.

Too clean.  

The building was a fossil for certain, but it didn’t have the signs of decay that V had grown accustomed to. There was no rust on the iron frame of the stained glass window despite the punishing humidity. Moss had not made its home on even a single one of the black stones. The clearing did not make sense with the trees being so large. The gap in canopy was as neat and circular as a skylight. Not even a pebble of the tower fall had found its way in through the conspicuous hole.

“Nothing seems unusual,” 9S called from inside. “But there’s no bell, not even a broken one.”

“Of course,” said V, gripping his cane to help keep his steps from weaving as he moved toward the ruin. “This place is too small; there was probably never a bell here to begin with.”

A smaller relief of the three-eyed symbol stared down at him from the highest stone on the threshold’s arch. Griffon perched atop it, obscuring it with his claws. “Great! We found it, and I hate it even more than I thought I would, now let’s get the hell outta here. This hike hasn’t done you any favors and whatever is in here will still be here if we come back later.”

“I think Griffon’s right,” said 9S. “I don’t feel anything but I don’t want to take any chances. Maybe if I can collect more data, I can figure out what you’re picking up that I can’t.”

V pressed at his temples. The bell rang in time with the throb intensifying at the center of his forehead. “We are not so pressed for time that we must finish this here and now," he relented. "I will take…your counsel…”

His vision swam.

Griffon and 9S shouted.

The last thing he saw was 9S rushing toward him, hand extended to catch him as he fell.

* * *

  
He awakened in a field of black flowers. A red-hued light shone down from a dark, churning sky. Though his tattoos were gone and his hair had gone white, it was wariness rather than panic that got him to his feet. The ill-omened tolling of the bell was gone, replaced by an echoing susurration.

It wasn’t hell, but it looked the part.

The scent and scorching heat of fire teased his senses. The flowers twitched and burst into flame and soot, spraying his body with cold black ash that smudged but wouldn’t come off. A vision of his childhood home appears in shades of orange and red, burning down around an apparition in the shape of his mother. His memory of her came back suddenly; sharp enough to cut through the long, harsh years since he had last seen her. She looked so little like the portrait in the mansion’s remains. Even the devil made in her image did not exactly match her.

She burned away too. Like everything else.

He watched from beneath knitted brows as his life was paraded in front of him. His days spent wandering, fighting, scrounging; a childhood of guerrilla war, gaunt, bony, fanged--Yamato swung with wild abandon, the only thing he could trust. Long forgotten shades of humans who had tried to care for him. The warmth of their smiles becoming the warmth of their blood as they were caught up in his battles.

They couldn't protect themselves. He couldn't protect them. He couldn't protect anything.  
  
He didn't remember when it was that he had finally gone cold and embraced power as the only thing worth anything. There was no single moment that could be kicked up from the dust in the corners of his mind. If there was, he had no intention of waiting around to be shown.

"If you want me to despair,” he called. "You will need much worse than this."  
  
A ray of white light parted the red clouds. He could not see what was beyond, but its voice was clear.

 _Power,_  it whispered in a sweet song that promised everything.  _Accept...the power of the gods._  
  
“You lack comprehension if you went through the effort of digging through our memory and believed we were the type to accept such a thing,” V scoffed.   
  
_Accept...the love of the gods..._  
  
“Not interested.”  
  
_Irrelevant... Accept us...or accept death._  
  
So it all came back to death hanging over his head again.

His cane was not with him. His summons were not with him. 9S was not with him. He had nothing to fight with but his fists and no enemy but a disembodied voice in the sky. Death was certain, but the alternative was worse. He had lived as a slave once. He would  _never_  let that be his fate again. 

“Take my life if you can,” he said, standing straight and raising his chin. “My submission is out of the question.”   
  
The light sparked and reddened. V stared into it, refusing to buckle or bow even as felt his skin begin to harden. He glanced down. .

He was turning into salt as pure and white as the pillars of the fallen tower. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: It doesn't show up in the game, but the world guide specifies the ruins of church are in the forest zone and that they have no idea what sect it was. The only thing left? A coat of arms depicting twins. 
> 
> The concept art for it actually looks way different from how I wrote it, but I really liked the idea of it as this Drakengard-era nightmare church just hanging out being creepy in the middle of the woods.


	22. Nearly Human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> V faces off against the remnants of the old world's destroyer and makes two interesting discoveries.

To struggle like a worm was more indignity than V could have suffered through, but his mind searched frantically for some way to fight back.

There wasn’t any pain to the creeping transformation, just a scratchy, tight pressure over his skin. An experimental attempt to flex his fingers found they moved, but barely. Teeth gritted, his eyes flicked in search of something, anything he could use. He forced himself to step forward despite rigid ankles and stiffening knees. The black flowers turned to dust as he weaved unsteadily through them.

The creep of the salt over his hips and shoulders forced him to stop. Thoughts of Vergil and Dante flashed through his mind. What would it mean for him to die there? He was an eternity away from home; would it change anything?

Where even was home? The crimson folds of his mother’s shawl came to mind—a garden full of roses and the places he read as a boy. That home didn’t exist. The version of himself that could claim that place was another man.

For V home was…Creaky leather and a jukebox that only worked when it wanted to. The scent of stale cigarette smoke and hot copper and metal polish. The charming, fearless twang of a woman he barely knew behind the wheel of a van that did the impossible.

Nero.

His fists would no longer respond, but he didn’t need them to. He didn’t need anything. So long as he could think and speak, he had a weapon. Baring his teeth at the blood-colored sky, he took several rapid breaths as the salt crept up over his belly and called out:

“ _To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower… Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour…_ ” A familiar heat prickled along what skin he could still feel. He roared out what he remembered most clearly, the painting upon the page of the book that he had left behind crystal clear in his mind. “ _A robin red breast in a cage puts all heaven in a rage; each outcry of the hunted hare a fiber from the brain does tear…_ ”

Violet energy sweltered around him. Without the cane to focus it, it amassed in his chest. The salt crept up over his chin, and he looked directly up into the pillar of light that had cursed him.

“ _Every wolfs and lions howl… raises from hell... A human soul…!_ ”

Demonic energy pulsed out and recoiled back on him. The burst of it leaving his body was arrow fast and powerful enough to knock him off his feet, sending him sprawling through the flowers. He skidded to a stop with a worrying crunch. The sky lit violet, but there was no sound. Nothing to indicate he’d hit anything. He coughed and struggled to get back onto his feet.

The salt sloughed off him like a brittle shell.

He froze in place and stared blankly at his intact fingers. He flexed the parts of his body that still had salt on them.

The salt collapsed away, piling like sand among the black ash.

"How curious..." he said with rising heat in his blood.

He brushed himself off, feeling all over again the intense rush of his own vitality. The light from above reddened and the salt crept over V with renewed vigor. He tilted his head back and laughed from deep in his body, with a malicious delight he hadn't felt since arriving there.

"Your tenacity is admirable," he purred as he brushed loose salt from his shoulders. "But it appears I am out of your jurisdiction."

The bells tolled anew from on high, and V prepared himself.

"GET THE HELL OUTTA MY WAY YOU TONE DEAF BITCH!"

Lightning scattered among the clouds and the bells ceased. Griffon dived like a streaking blue comet, nearly crashing into V before spreading his wings and coming to a neat stop at eye level. "Well, Shakespeare, I’d say I told you so but I'd say we’re well past that! Do you know how much fucking work it is to carry you out of the woods even with that soda can's help?!"

"Is that why you're so late?" V asked nonchalantly. "How did you even find me?"

Griffon snorted. “I always know where you are, V. This is just a completely bullshit in-between-ish type location. Kinda in your head and kinda somewhere else, I don’t really get it and it was a hassle to find you. What the fuck even is that up there?”

"The source of white chlorination syndrome... Some ‘gods’ still lurking in search of humans after ten thousand years." He flicked salt from beneath his nails. "It didn't take."

“Well fancy that,” Griffon crowed. “I’ll find you a nice gold star to commemorate you not getting turned to paste without me around.”

V smirked, and patted Griffon’s neck. His unusually caustic temper meant he must have been quite worried. “My existence as Vergil’s humanity or not… I am still a son of Sparda, it seems.”

“Sure you are, V—if you’re done waxing philosophical about your bloodline, you wanna address the weird mannequin-lookin' thing up there?”

V raised a brow and offered his arm to Griffon. “You said this is my mind, correct?”

“Sort of,” Griffon muttered, perching heavily. “It’s like a place between two dreams? If that makes sense. It probably doesn’t make sense. I can’t explain this shit, V.”

It made perfect sense to V. They were at an interstice—his own dream and the dream of the gods who had destroyed this world brushing against one another. If his body was no longer anywhere near the church, he likely had more control of this place than it did. His investigations had nearly cost him his life, and he had no desire to further tempt fate.

He lifted his other arm and snapped.

The black flowers withered and scattered into the air. The clouds recoiled back. V thought he saw something vast and white with a mouth of only gnashing block teeth. A hint of a shape, a suggestion of sparks and hatred.  
Like all his nightmares, V let it pass over him and when he woke, he could scarcely remember it.

Everything V expected turning into salt would feel like awaited him on the other side of consciousness. Pain greeted him with energy of a mutt leaping into its beloved master’s arms. His skin felt two sizes too small to contain his flesh, and he could have believed his stomach had been filled with the oily, scrap metal-clogged coastal waters. His hair stuck to his cheeks and forehead, but he couldn’t imagine how that was possible. Sweat only existed as the fever dream of his cracked lips and dry tongue.

Sweltering sunlight beamed down from just above the white block sheltering his upper body from the worst of it. He had fallen in cloying humidity and awakened into Dust and grit stuck to his skin, far too much like the sensation of the salt for his comfort. When he tried to move, he realized too late that his cane was laid flat along his body. The portion that had not been shielded from the sun rolled, grazing his exposed navel, and he hissed.

A few feet away from his head, a white-capped head jerked up and an unobstructed face appeared. The blindfold was wrung to its absolute limit around 9S’ fists, his arms locked just as tight around his knees, and his knees pulled so close to his chest that he resembled a folding chair more than a person. From under disheveled hair, his gray-blue eyes stared wide and dull.

He didn’t speak, despite his slack mouth, so V licked his own dry lips. “How long…?”

“Three hours,” 9S answered without moving.

“Where…?”

“The edge of the desert.” Slowly, 9S’ arms unraveled their crushing grip on the rest of his body. “Griffon and Pod flew you southwest as soon as you…fainted.”

V managed a nod a closed his eyes. As he exhaled, his body sank comfortably into the dust. Had he ever been so exhausted in his life? A rapid scuffing made his eyes flick open, but it was only 9S. He was shuffled closer and was leaning over V with that same intense, fish-eyed stare.

“I’m alright,” he reassured.

9S nodded, but his expression, or lack thereof, didn’t change. V’s thin, wasting voice was probably not convincing.

“I’m really alright, 9S.”

“…Do you still hear it?”

The only thing to hear out there was the shift of the sand every time the breeze picked up. “No.”

“Good…” He remained unnaturally stiff, but his gaze softened. “What happened to you…?”

V’s mind was clogged and slow. Revealing that he wasn’t human enough for the syndrome to take hold was a risk he couldn’t take, especially with his body in such bad condition, but he couldn’t think straight anymore.

“I met the gods,” he said with a faint smile. “But they found me to be quite…indigestible.”

9S’ face twitched. “What does _that_ mean?”

He began to laugh in shallow, pitching heaves. “What does that even mean?! You just passed out in the middle of the woods and I didn’t know what to do other that get you away from there and away from where someone might find you so I sent Griffon and Pod here because no one’s ever here since the tower fall destroyed the outpost, and when I caught up your tattoos were all fading in and out and Griffon told me ‘Don’t do anything stupid boy-boy, I’m going in’ and I sat here and dug through the archives for anything that could possibly help you or tell me what had happened to you only for you to wake up looking even worse than before you passed out and tell me—” His laughter intensified, high and wild like an animal. “—That you met gods and they tried to _eat_ you???”

9S could be emotional, but this was new. His body shook so hard it looked like he would rattle himself to pieces. The hysterical laugh died down to reedy, shuddering breaths. His eyes set in a familiar glare with an unfamiliar glisten.

V stared in spite of his vision going fuzzy as he tried to process what he was seeing. “Are you…crying…?”

9S covered his face clumsily. His fists went to rub the tears away, while his forearms moved to cover his face. He turned away as though he could hide it, even as his small shoulders continued to shake. There was no redness to his eyes. No flush to his cheeks. But they were wet all that same.

He was crying. Not only had his makers given him the form and mind of a child, they had given him the capacity to cry. Without thinking, V reached for 9S’s face. The unexpectedly stony weight of his forearm gave him pause, and a moment to realize what he was doing. But it was too late.

9S clutched the outreached hand in both his own, and his silent shudders grew more intense.

“I’m sorry…!” he sobbed. “I promised to protect you, but I didn’t know what to _do_!”

“It’s alright,” V repeated clumsily. He almost said that he didn’t either, but he wasn’t prepared for the possibility of upsetting 9S further. “I’ll explain properly later. I’m alright, just…very tired.”

“Thank goodness.” He made an effort to smile, but his face was a crumpled mess. “I was so scared…!”

Tears fell onto V’s fingers. He had wondered if they would be oil or some other substitute fluid, but it was water; warm as any human's.

He could only watch in baffled awe as 9S slowly bowed forward as he wept, still holding onto his hand as though it was the focus of a desperate prayer.


	23. Body and Soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 14: 9S breaks his vigil and re-acquaints himself with the records he found before the tower fall.

V had proven too weak to walk.

9S, being too short to support him, had to practically carry him back to edge of the city. From there, he had managed to wrangle a moose that could more comfortably carry V back the rest of the way while 9S walked alongside to ensure the animal stayed calm.

The rooftop was out of the question. He judged the third floor high enough to be safe and set V down in the darkest corner possible. There was little in the way of debris around, but he tried to arrange at least enough cover to hide V from any chance passersby. There wasn't much he could do.

V had been sleeping ever since.

9S never left him. There was plenty to do to fill the time. The water bottles needed filling. A dozen small physical errors demanded maintenance. Yet 9S stayed. What if V woke up in dark, unfamiliar surroundings? He might panic. What if 9S went all the way out to the desert and V needed him? What if he just stopped breathing while he wasn’t watching?

It was only as one day passed and stretched toward two that 9S stirred. Six hours was a long sleep for V. He was cresting forty.

He shifted his stiff jaw and licked his lips before whispering into the dark. “Hey…Griffon?”

That tattoo’s shifted. A mysterious cloud not unlike particles of soot converged on a nearby window ledge and condensed into the shape of the blue eagle. The three-pupiled eyes regarded him with a kind of teasing malice, but he didn’t really look at V or the pods any different.

“So you can hear me in there,” said 9S. “Is V alright?”

Griffon snorted. “That all you called me for? Of course he’s alright.”

“But it’s not normal for humans to sleep this long, right? What if he’s starving or dehydrated or something? There’s no way for him to take in any energy.”

“You sure are a workaholic, huh boy-bot.”

9S frowned. Hadn’t someone else called him that recently? “Why aren’t you worried? Is it a witch thing?”

“Ha! Yeah, sure, call it that, gives me the warm and fuzzies every time. Look, the long and short is that the contract we got goin’ means my strength comes from V and with my life tied to his I take him not dying as a matter of big personal interest—and he ain’t dyin’. He's probably the strongest I've ever seen him.” He ruffled his wings and gave a low snigger. “Not that that's a high peak to climb.”

9S sighed and lifted to his feet, wincing as fluid flushed into places that he had been sitting on too long. “Alright, so he’s…okay. But what the hell actually happened to him?”

Griffon shrugged. “Exactly what he said, he got in a fight with some old bullshit gods that were—” He turned and glared at Pod 042 where he hovered idly over V. “— ** _Supposed_** to be dead.”

9S followed his gaze and his brows drew together. “Pod 042, did you know something about this?”

“UNCLEAR. PROPOSAL: SUPPORT UNIT GRIFFON SHOULD CLARIFY.”

"There’s nothin’ to clarify! You said there was no chance of him catching that stupid chlorination disease!"

9S' head flicked between Griffon and Pod 042. "What is he talking about?"

"DETAILS OF WHITE CHLORINATION SYNDROME PRESENT IN GESTALT REPORT #1 FOUND BY UNIT 9S DURING PREVIOUS DESCENT MISSION. BASED ON ARCHIVAL DATA, SUBJECT V WAS PROJECTED TO HAVE A 0% CHANCE OF CONTRACTING THE DISEASE."

"Looked to me like you got your math fucked up, soda can."

"NEGATIVE. ARCHIVAL ANYALSIS AND PROJECTIONS WERE CORRECT. HYPOTHESIS AND UPDATED ANALYSIS: REMNANT OF INTER-DIMENSIONAL ENTITY “GIANT” IS PRESENT AT THE RUINED STRUCTURE IN THE FOREST. IN ORDER FOR SUBJECT V’S CHANCES OF CONTRACTING WHITE CHLORINATION SYNDROME TO REMAIN AT 0%, THE UNKNOWN STRUCTURE SHOULD BE AVOIDED."

"Well thanks asshole, but it doesn't matter anymore," Griffon growled, sparks jumping between the three prongs of his beak. "The syndrome couldn't keep a hold on him. Lucky for you."

9S snapped from his analytic trance and stepped between them. "Easy, the last thing V needs is for you guys to start a fight right now. I’m not happy this happened either, but I’d prefer to focus on what we need next. Isn’t there something you could do?"

Griffon sighed and rolled his eyes. Seeing the three pupils move synchronously made 9S’ own eyes hurt. "Look boy-bot, instead of bothering me, why don't you do something useful like go do your supply run."

"But what if the machines—"

"Oh for fuck's _sake_ , kid, loosen your bolts! I'm not gonna let V die because of some half-rusted overgrown wind-up toys!" He spread his wings, batting the air with increasing agitation until static began to pop on 9S’ skin.

"Get the hell out of here and don't come back without food!"

* * *

 

9S paused at the end of the cracked asphalt and stared at the dusty distance where the oppressive climate baked everything to a bleached beige. He didn’t look forward to the sand in his shoes or the heat taxing the limits of his coolant system, and he couldn’t help frowning over his shoulder down the long road that led back to V.

In truth he was a little glad for some distance. The last thing V probably remembered was 9S crying.

The memory of it made his temperature rise well before the environment had a chance to. It was another display of the frightening weight humanity had to his programming, but it was more than that too. Everything he had felt was so muddy and intertwined—the guilt and fear flooding from everywhere within him. Everything was such a blur of visual distortions and strained motor control. It took Pod 153 warning him that V would be defenseless if he let his systems take damage for him to calm down.

To look back and know that it was all a trick of his programming and feel anger at the cruelty of his design would have been easy and simple. He would have preferred it. Instead, he wrestled a consistent urge to stay at V’s side and a thousand increasingly irrational what ifs that refused him any sense of V’s safety or security despite Griffon’s assurance. There was something biting and personal about the relief he felt when V said he was alright, and he worried he might have revealed himself more than intended. So much for prohibiting his emotions.

He crammed his hands into his pockets with a sigh and felt the wad of his blindfold. Ruined as it was, he replaced it and hoped it wouldn’t be awkward when V woke up.

...Hopefully, he’d wake up soon.

“Pod, give me a summary of each of the Gestalt Reports.”

Pod 153 obliged while he focused on traversing the increasing unstable sands. 9S remembered reading them once, but they were dull as history books to him at the time. They were history books. From a time so long ago that it shouldn’t have mattered anymore. Now, as the information was recited to him, it seemed critically important.

A giant and a dragon appearing out of nowhere, magic maso particles that caused humans to turn to salt, Gestalts and Replicants, relapses, clinical trials, human experimentation with maso--

"They experimented with it even then?" 9S interrupted. "Even though it was killing them?"

"AFFIRMATIVE. THE GESTALT AND REPLICANT SYSTEM RELIED ON MASO SO IT MUST BE INFERRED THAT SOME PARTICLES WERE ACQUIRED WHICH DID NOT CAUSE WHITE CHLORINATION."

9S hummed and let her continue. It was a lot of information, yet never quite enough to answer the kinds of questions he had. Particularly about relapses.

Devola and Popola’s data had mentioned relapses. Time had stolen the context for their memories, and he had not been in the right state of mind to consider the true meaning of the reports they carried. Their claim that they were made when there were still people was pre-Gestalt. Real people, as they were before white chlorination, or the ominously named ‘Legion’ had scourged them. Humanity after those things had fallen because of something involving a being called the ‘Original’, but what exactly? They seemed so desperate to keep things stable; no way they hadn’t done everything in their power to prevent the worst outcome. They were even the ones who sent the last of the Replicant data to the moon.

Something tugged in his chest as he pressed through the sandstorm. Replicants were supposed to be shells for humans to return to. And yet they had gained sentience. Acted as aware entities for at least 600 years. It had to be assumed they were all flesh and blood, even if they were partially made of maso. Just as he had to assume that the human soul was not something that could be easily recorded and put into a data bank.

If given the chance, would Devola and Popola have saved their souls instead? Wasn’t that what made humans what they were? Was it enough that the Replicants had become aware, or was that the desperation of the Devola and Popola models? It was all so complicated. It was all so…Familiar.

“REPORT: UNIT 9S IS VEERING OFF COURSE BY OVER 15 DEGREES.”

“Hm? Oh, right, thanks.”

The sandstorm was no place to think about something like that, he chided himself. And anyway, it was old news. Nothing to be done about it. He told himself this, but he was already busily crunching probabilities when he spotted a palm tree through the gusting winds. If he had uncovered eleven reports in this zone, it was likely that this was where it had all taken place. There had to be more data around, he just had to look for it. Maybe Emil would know something. He was scatterbrained, but he had been around at least as long as the aliens. There was nothing 9S could truly do with the information, but he craved it all the same.

Maybe a memory would stir if he could just talk to Emil about it for a while.

He emerged on the other side of the sandstorm back into the baking sunlight. It was a short trot to the oasis between the buried rooftops of old buildings. Shade awaited him, as did the crystal clear and relatively cool waters. A few splashes on his face and neck rinsed sand from him and helped his temperature regulation. Even with a full supply of coolant, extended exposure to the desert sun could easily overheat androids no matter how advanced they were. As human as they looked, sweat was one of the few things they either didn't or couldn't replicate. He might have to ask for a cloak of his own at this rate.

He took off his boots and socks and shivered as he shoved his feet down into the damp sand at the edge of the oasis. A foot or so down it was practically cold.

He squatted down and filled the bottles as carefully as possible to avoid getting sand inside. Only one thing didn’t make sense. “V said he’s from the past right?”

“UNKNOWN. SUBJECT V BELIEVES HE HAS BEEN MOVED IN DIMENSION RATHER THAN TIME. HE REPORTS THAT NONE OF THE INCIDENTS IN THE GESTALT REPORTS OCCURRED IN HIS TIME.”

“Well yeah… But he’s still human even if he’s from some other time or dimension. I’m glad he’s alive… but I can’t figure out how he beat white chlorination syndrome. There’s no record of any humans resisting it is there?”

“NEGATIVE. HYPOTHESES: WHITE CHLORINATION CAN BE BEATEN BY MAGIC, WHITE CHLORINATION CANNOT AFFECT SUBJECT V BECAUSE HE IS NOT A HUMAN FROM THIS DIMENSION, OR SUBJECT V IS NOT HUMAN.”

9S jerked and nearly dropped the third bottle. His lips pressed together, but there was no use getting upset. Like Pod 042, she was just making conjectures based on the data provided to her. It didn’t mean she was anywhere near right considering what a unique situation it was.

“I’m going to go with the first option.” He stood and rubbed tiredly at his hair. Going back then and there would have been fine by him, but Griffon would probably fry him. “We don’t know when he’s gonna wake up… What can I bring back that won’t spoil?”

“VARIOUS FORMS OF PLANT MATTER ARE EDIBLE BY HUMANS AND GENERALLY DO NOT SPOIL AT THE RATE OF ANIMAL MATTER.”

“I don’t know anything about plants, Pod, not where it concerns eating them. What if we give him something poisonous? Do you have any guides in your archive that could help with that?”

“AFFIRMATIVE. HOWEVER, ARCHIVAL BOOKS WILL LIKELY NOT DESCRIBE EDIBLE FLORA IN THE AREA AND WOULD BE INEFFICIENT. PROPOSAL: REQUEST ASSISTANCE FROM RESISTANCE MEMBER ANTHURIUM.”

9S clenched his eyes shut and groaned at the desert sky.


	24. Heart and Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 9S speaks to Anthurium properly for the first time since The Outburst and faces the consequences of skipping maintenance.

Frozen on his thin legs and poised on his toes to flee at a moment’s notice, 9S felt more like an imitation of a deer than of a human. The effort of just standing in front of Anthurium’s set him on edge in a way no combat had since his re-activation, and they hadn’t even exchanged words yet.

Anthurium bobbed his head in his usual polite greeting, and then, seeing that 9S didn’t immediately make himself scarce, swiveled around and leaned forward onto his desk, prepared to provide his full attention. His distressingly easy-going smile came complimentary.

As did his comfortable silence while 9S’ scoured his mind with plummeting composure for something intelligent to say.

“I’m sorry!” His eyes and fists clenched simultaneously. Okay, intelligent was off the table. “—for before, I mean.”

Anthurium gave a slow shrug and a slower smile. “Don’t worry about it. You in need of something?”

9S skin prickled. Uncomfortable heat spread up through his neck and into his palms. He couldn’t sweat, but itchiness was apparently within his design specifications, and managed to completely blank him on what he was there for. It was all he could do to regurgitate the last question from V that had caught him off guard. “Do you have any salt?”

“Salt, huh? Sorry to say, but you might have to pay a visit to the other coast for salt.”

“I-I see.”

His insides felt like they were being vacuum sealed to his skin. Despite his attempts to tell himself how irrational it was to get so upset over so little—over nothing, in fact—the hurried pulse of his black box could not be calmed. This much volatility wasn’t normal. The stress of V’s sudden illness had to have caused an issue somewhere that had gone undiagnosed and uncorrected while he ignored his maintenance to wait for V to wake up.

While his intentions were selfless, it may not have been wise for him to visit an android he already knew had a strange effect on him.

“There was actually something a lot more important than the salt...” He stood straight and tried to focus. Just get it over with quick, and he could move on. “Do you know anything about things aside from meat that humans ate?”

Anthurium tilted his head and raised his goggles. “Like plants?”

“I guess, yeah. I’m looking for edible things that might grow around here, but I don’t really know where to start.”

“What for?”

_Shit._

He would have never been unprepared for such an obvious question if his head was in the right place. Instead he fumbled for an explanation that didn’t sound suspicious or give too much away.

“I just…think it’s worth knowing.”

Anthurium relaxed back into his seat and crossed his arms with a little smile. “Worth knowing, huh…?”

The itchiness crawled from 9S’ neck to his lower spine like an army of biting insects determined to burrow into his torso. A lame lie on his part didn’t deserve that kind of helplessly bittersweet grin, even if it was for a good cause.

“If you want to know, then,” Anthurium said, rising from his seat. He ambled back into the shade of the tent and reached up on top of a haphazard stack of boxes. “Go easy on me though, my specialty was meat.”

What he tossed down was a ratty-looking book bound in leather so rough the texture ghosted across 9S’ sensors the longer he looked. Between the faded brown bindings, the pages were thick, unevenly edged, and more yellow than white. Primitive, in short. The contents were a different matter. The drawings within weren’t impressive, but their annotations were as painstakingly made as any technical document. Though 9S preferred the easy accessibility of data, it must have taken ages to compile so much information letter by small and immaculately drawn letter.

“Anthurium this is… This is amazing. I can’t take this.”

“Sure, and you couldn’t take that pack I gave you either.” He sank back into his seat and folded his hands over his stomach. “Is it for that tall fellow you’ve been coming through with?”

Though his breath caught in his throat, there was no need to lie. “…Yeah.”

“Then take it.” He lowered back into his seat and adjusted his goggles back over his eyes. “If it’ll make your friend happy, that’s more important than it gathering dust around here.”

Stinging words, though 9S couldn’t tell just which part of them stung. The concept that he and V looked like friends to someone who only ever saw them for a few seconds at a time was interesting, but he didn’t think that was what bothered him. V blending in like his companion was a logical conclusion of giving him resistance clothes, and yet…

“Do we—do he and I really… look like friends?” This time the seeking innocence in his voice was unfeigned. It trembled slightly, as if he were afraid of the answer as much as he needed to know it.

“Whoever he is to you,” said Anthurium. “You look alive when you’re with him.”

9S cracked a smile and hummed thoughtfully to mask mild disappointment. He had been hoping for a different sort of answer, but it wasn’t as if Anthurium had ever spoken to V. Still, it was something to think about.

“Thanks. Is there uhm… anything I can do for you? Something I could find maybe?”

“Appreciated, but I can’t say there’s anything I want.”

“Will you let me know if you change your mind?”

Again, that warm smile accompanied by a relaxed nod.

V’s smiles were so cold that when he bothered to express them, they only emphasized the distance between him and 9S. It was like they were designed to keep him at precisely the distance V thought he should stay at. The warmest smiles he had seen from V yet had gone to Griffon and to Pod 042 of all things. Anthurium’s smiles were just the opposite. Like being welcomed into a home that wasn’t his. One 9S didn’t really feel he had any right to enjoy the comforts of. It raised a thick lump in his throat.

He still couldn’t name just what it was he felt when he spoke with Anthurium. Loneliness was familiar to him and came to mind, but it wasn’t that. It felt peripheral, like a something that lived on the opposite shore of whatever new emotional territory 9S was walking on. He had no guides or familiar paths to navigate; no one had ever brought him to such a place. Not 2B or his operators. Not anyone.

Quietly, he promised himself he would use the notes to make V the best meal he could. It might not be a feast, but it was something. Just a little piece of what Anthurium had intended.

He wished with tight fists that he could have told him.

* * *

  
The high cliff looking over the ravine would have made for a great spot to sit and flip through the book, if 9S’ eyes had not immediately drifted to the woods beyond the waterfall.

His fingers twitched with tactile memory. How could someone who weighed so little in 9S’ arms have fallen to the earth with such frightening speed? That was the first thing that had crossed his mind. It just kept repeating as random information, some important and some not, flooded 9S’ systems: The throb of V’s pulse in his neck as his head lolled back. The empty green bottle glistening on the stone where V left it. The pairs of teeth, eighteen all told, that lined Griffon’s tongue as he yelled words 9S could not process. The indifferent three-eyed symbol staring down from the arches.

That one had snapped him out of it. To him, that symbol represented an enemy he knew he could fight rather than something as nebulous and alien to him as human disease. So, he fought, however he could. Whether it was 9S’ transport order or Griffon’s help or V’s own magic or some combination of the three, V had managed to beat back white chlorination syndrome.

But it had not been an easy or painless victory.

Pod 042 might be right—they had been fine up until they got close to the place. But V had heard it, even as far out as it where 9S stood now. Calling him. _Luring_ him. As long as that place existed, whatever gods were there would always be a threat to V.

“QUERY: WHY IS UNIT 9S NOT UTILIZING THE REPORT PROVIDED BY RESISTANCE MEMBER ANTHURIUM?”

“We’re going back into the woods,” he said forebodingly, taking off at a dash. “We have to destroy that structure.”

Pod 153 whipped around in front of him. “PROPOSAL: **STOP**.”

The unusually blunt and aggressive attempt to dissuade him got a pause, not a stop. He brushed by her easily.

“THIS POD CANNOT RECOMMEND THE INTENDED PLAN OF ACTION,” she continued from just behind his head. “ANALYSIS OF MATERIAL 9S HAS BEEN READING IN RELATION TO WITCHES AND WITCHCRAFT SUGGESTS THAT STRUCTURE MAY CONSTITUTE A FORM OF CONTAINMENT. POSSIBILITY OF RELEASING THE ENTITY WITHIN IS GREATER THAN 0%.”

9S slowed. Just before he reached the edge of the cliff, he stopped. He reached out, bracing himself against nearby tree, and closed his eyes.

“Damnit… Damnit!” He punched the bark hard enough to send splinters dancing across the moss-coated stones. "How can I protect him if I can’t destroy the only thing so far that’s endangered him?!”

“PROPOSAL: DO NOT ALLOW UNIT V TO INTERACT WITH STIMULI THAT UNIT 9S CANNOT DETECT, AND FOLLOW PROPOSAL PROVIDED BY POD 042 TO KEEP RE-INFECTION PROBABILITY AT 0%.”

He glared out at the wooded horizon half obscured by thick ozone and rising mist. His teeth sank into his bottom lip until he was startled by moisture dripping down his cheeks.

“What the—?”

He rubbed furiously at his face, but somehow that only made fresh tears come faster, leading to a vicious string of wiping and cursing through gritted teeth. On the verge of either sobbing or screaming, he crumpled against the tree and sank to his knees. “What is wrong with me?!”

“ANALYSIS: SEVERE PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK OF SUBJECT V’S COLLAPSE HAS CAUSED DAMAGE TO MEMORY REGIONS LEADING TO INABILITY TO REGULATE EMOTIONAL STATES. PROPOSAL: 9S SHOULD UNDERGO MAINTENANCE TO PREVENT RECKLESS BEHAVIORS AND IDEATIONS.”

“Well, I can’t exactly do that here!”

He realized he was yelling. It wasn’t really at the pod. Or at himself. Like his tears, the volume increase was just something that was happening to him despite his attempts to think his way through the strange tide of emotions. He expanded his chest until he felt the subtle tautness of his artificial fibers and released it all in a single resounding bellow. Birds scattered. The splash and clop of moose fleeing echoed up from the nearby stream.

He felt better. But he was still crying.

Stubbornly, he scooted himself back against a gnarled root and pulled Anthurium’s book back out. He had to hold it up high where he couldn’t ruin the pages with his ridiculous tears. If he couldn’t go deal with whatever was out in the woods, he was damn well going to bring V back the best food he could find.

Whatever unimpeded anger he was dealing with got him most of the way through the book. The tears almost stopped about twenty pages in, but he made the mistake of pausing to try and wipe them. They continued unabated until he was practically half-way through. Having learned his lesson properly by then, he kept reading.

Pod marked several locations on the map. Supposedly there were a great number of interesting things that could be picked from the forest. Mint, wild onions, cattails, burdock, and assortment of flowers and little berries he was nervous about getting right... Clover and dandelions; he knew those well. Their ability to grow fast in bad soil or in concrete meant they pretty much had a monopoly on areas where there were a lot of conflicts. And every single part of them was edible so he couldn’t get them wrong if he tried. He flipped a few more pages out of interest and stopped. Wild oranges descended from a local strain once referred to as ‘satsuma’ were deep in the northwest part of the woods.

According to the pod they had been very popular with humans. And they provided a nutrient that was supposedly good for fending off illnesses.

He clapped the book shut and hopped to his feet. “You have that marked down right? Do you think they’re growing right now?”

“UNKNOWN. PROCEED TO AREA MARKED ON MAP.”

If he didn’t know any better, he’d have thought she sounded a little worn out. He wouldn’t have blamed her—he was worn out by himself too.

The little bit of laughter he managed felt surprisingly good. “Hey, Pod? …Thank you.”

Pod 153 slowly swiveled in the air to face him. “…WHAT IS THE REASON FOR UNIT 9S’ EXPRESSION OF GRATITUDE?”

“You’ve done your best to keep me from getting too wound up and have been really supportive…”

“POD 153 _IS_ ASSIGNED TO SUPPORT UNIT 9S.”

“Well, yes, but... It's more than that…”

He shuffled his feet and plucked at the seam of his glove. His memories, half-processed though they were, contained a version of himself he understood but no longer completely identified with. He could still grasp everything he had been feeling easily. It hadn’t really been that long. But something was different. Not in the way he thought of things, but in the way he felt about them.

And yeah, most likely it was just his memory damage, and this would be looked back on as a weird episode he’d had after he completed maintenance. But if he was in the right state of mind right then and there, there wasn’t anything wrong with riding it out, was there?

“After… After the Bunker fell. And everything—happened. You were doing your best to keep me functional even though I yelled at you and ignored you.”

He stopped fidgeting and looked up at her blank chassis properly. “Thank you... For trying to save me from myself."

“NEITHER APOLOGY NOR GRATITUDE IS NECESSARY FOR SUPPORT TO CONTINUE."

“I know, but it’s the principle of the thing, you know?” He sat a hand gently atop her case and grinned. “I wouldn’t have gotten to meet V without your support.”

“THIS POD DOES NOT FULLY GRASP THIS ‘PRINCIPLE’; HOWEVER, ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF SUPPORT EFFORTS IS APPRECIATED. THIS POD PROMISES TO CONTINUE PROTECTING UNIT 9S.”

9S smile brightened and he held out a fist to her. Her tiny mechanical fist bumped his, and it was almost like nothing had ever changed.

Luckily, he didn’t have enough water in reserve to do any more crying.


	25. Dandelion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 15: V awakens from his long sleep.

Consciousness lagged several seconds behind the opening of V’s eyes. The muted light and slab of gray concrete far too close to his face didn’t help. It wasn't until the textured grooves in the stone began to play tricks on his vision that he realized he was awake. Every part of him was heavy with exhaustion, not for lack of sleep but for excess of it. Stiffness and creaks answered even the most tentative efforts to move his body. He managed to lift his wrists and splay his fingers up just barely enough to squint down through the gloom at them.

 _Don’t strain yourself_ , said a voice from within him. _Gang’s all here._

Reassured, he let his hands drop and closed his eyes again. Sleep was out of the question, but for a moment it was good to just lay there in that mildly claustrophobic hole and breathe. He felt like he had been beaten within an inch of his life, but he was still alive.

Alive and **safe**.

A pleasant smell struck him as his faculties slowly returned. A green, grassy sort of scent that summoned old memories of reading in gardens he hadn’t seen in bloom in decades. Old trees that he liked to climb and shaded patches he napped in felt crystal clear to him, as though he had walked those long-lost places only days ago. In digging through his mind, the gods had given fresh form to faded things.

He was even less eager to daydream than he was to sleep. He slid, wincing, from the concrete lean-to until he could at least sit upright.

Pod floated down and bobbed cordially at eye level. “GOOD MORNING, V.”

V opened his mouth to respond and found his tongue unwilling to participate.

Pod’s antenna lifted and spun, and he floated off to the side and returned with a full bottle of water in his claws. V sighed with gratitude he couldn’t yet speak and wet his mouth with a few drops. He poured more into his hand and wiped it over his face and up through his hair.  The sensation of accumulated filth was enough to form a pit in his stomach that left him even less interested in drinking more water.

“How long has it been?” His voice was a deep, unrecognizable croak in his own ears.

“REPORT: UNCONSCIOUS STATE PERSISTED FOR 57 HOURS AND 12 MINUTES.”

No wonder it felt like his clothes were half-fused to his body. He rolled his shoulders and pawed at unreachable tension deep between his shoulders. More than food or water, he wanted a bath. Even a shower would do so long as it was hot.

Short, quick footsteps rebounded off the bare floors and ceilings before finding their escape through the open windows. They stopped as soon as their source came into sight around a corner and froze in place.

“You’re awake!”

“So I am.”

Unconsciously, he drew his arms in around himself as 9S approached him. His eyes hunted for details in the shape of his cheeks and the position of his hands for any sign of what he might be thinking, or worse, feeling. He was no condition to deal with another emotional outburst. It came as no surprise that 9S was wearing his blindfold again. V hadn’t bawled like that since he was a child, but he would never have been able to show his face to anybody who saw him in that condition.

Luckily, 9S seemed to have cooled down since their last encounter. He dropped into a deep squat in front of V and peered up at him as earnestly as ever.

“You okay…?”

Up close, 9S was strangely…scruffy. If not for the roll of wire mesh tucked under his arm, he could have easily been a normal boy coming home from a long day of play in places he probably shouldn’t have been.

“Stiff,” V answered slowly. He craned his neck in another futile attempt to ease his soreness. “But that’s to be expected. I will live. Why are you carrying netting?”

With a self-satisfied smile, 9S pointed to a bright green pile of leaves—undoubtedly the source of the fresh green scent V had noted in the air. “I didn’t know when you’d wake up, so I found plants instead of meat. Pod said I should wash them before you ate them, but since they’re all so small, I needed something to keep them getting lost in the water.”

He gathered up the whole pile and quickly but tenderly stuffed it into his pack. “I didn’t think you’d be awake, yet—I’ll bring them back as fast as possible; you must be really hungry.”

V’s stomach turned as though it were in the middle of a nightmare. He wanted food even less than he wanted water. “I’ve had far more than my fill of rest. I will come with you.”

The moment he got on his feet, his head filled with static.

 “V? V--Whoa!”

Without any conscious thought on his part, he had put a bracing arm up against the near wall. His chin flattened the tooth that hung from his neck against his thin chest with worrying pressure given how weightless he felt. He found he wasn’t standing as much as he was being held up by a convenient placement of walls and limbs—only half of which were his own.

“You can’t just get up and go like that,” 9S wheezed from practically underneath him. The motherly tone of the scolding was lost on V, given it sounded like he 9S was speaking from the other side of an especially luxurious pillow. “You don’t have to lie back down, but don’t rush yourself. I can handle washing some plants.”

Bewildered, V allowed himself to be sat down.

9S left him there to gather his thoughts and let his head float back down into his proper place. After only a few minutes, a vaguely familiar uneasiness came over him. He shot back to his feet, suddenly short of breath and weaker than a failing heart, but full of motivation.  He stumbled to the nearest window, which was half clogged by the collapse of a neighboring building, and dry-heaved.

Sweat rose on his skin like goosebumps, following a skulking heat that started at his lower back, crept up his bony spine, raised the hairs on his nape, and finally flushed his face. A violent cramp just above his navel jerked his scrawny frame, and he wretched hard enough to pop several of his joints.

Dry salt spilled from his lips over the dilapidated rubble. It spared him the noxious taste of bile, but instead left his throat raw and stinging as the grains poured out. He reflexively wiped his mouth, but just as quickly began to spit to get the overwhelming taste of salt out of his mouth.

Griffon whistled. _Yikes._

V almost laughed at the dry remark, were he not so busy scraping stray granules from his lips. He had thought it was strange that there were no physical signs of his brush with the gods. The experience had been so visceral, but there had been no salt left behind when 9S carried him out of the desert.

Lo and behold, he hadn’t gotten away quite as cleanly as he thought.

With hopefully the last offending evidence of the experience expelled, he felt infinitely better. Enough that his mouth tingled, and his tongue curled in anticipation as he reached for the water he had previously ignored. It was lukewarm. He didn’t care. Swishing the taste of salt out of his mouth was its own reward, on top of which draining the bottle in a single greedy drink was just an extra treat.

Finally, he was able to take a deep breath, stand straight, and organize himself. His cane glinted against the wall near where he had been laying. He wrapped his fingers around the handle. It wasn’t anything he needed, but he planted it at his side anyway. Having a weapon in his grip was familiar and soothing after the unexpected way things had turned out.

Little things he had seen but not truly processed jumped out at him anew. The black clothes V had arrived in were folded neatly on the ledge of the nearest open window. Atop them, basking in the eternal sunlight, lay a sprig of tiny, white blossoms with attractively curled petals. He brushed his hair back and leaned down to catch their pleasing, citrusy scent. A much larger bouquet of them rested against the leaning slab that had covered him while he slept. Looking at it from the outside, it was clearly meant to keep him hidden or maybe just block out some of the light, or perhaps both.

Peering in, he found not one but two cloaks, one carefully folded where his head would have been, and the other splayed haphazardly over the floor. It must have been covering him before he got up.

He meandered around the bend 9S had come from and halted. What he could be called a cauldron sat in the corner. It looked precisely like the kind of thing that would have been somewhere in the forest castle. A bed of faintly smoking ash separated it from the floor, and it was full to the brim with the floating remains of boiled dandelions. Wisps of steam floated up, warming the room with an earthy scent.

Several sheets of metal, some large and some small, were strewn along the floor. Each had been beaten roughly into the shape of a basin (with 9S’ fists, he wondered?) and were so clean they might have been reflective if not for their scoured surfaces. They must have been makeshift bowls, but they looked more like over-sized dog dishes.

Another sprig of white flowers sat in one of them, carefully placed atop a leather-bound book.

A tug in his heart pulled him toward it. He picked it up with images of the book he’d left behind fluttering through his mind. Was it too much to hope for poetry this far in the future?

The moment he opened it and began to take in the contents, his eyes softened, and a melting smile raised his lips. The roughness of the cover didn’t stem from age, but from being handmade.  It wasn’t crafted for any lofty print, but for the simple notes on flora within. Dry and informational though the words were, every letter was written with care and focus. This was someone’s much beloved work, and he flipped each page with appropriately gentle brushes of his fingertips.

There wasn’t a single scratched out word or malformed stroke in the whole thing.

An awed whisper escaped him as he closed it. “ _Little lamb, who made thee…?_ ”

“REPORT: THOSE ARE THE FIELD NOTES OF RESISTANCE MEMBER ANTHURIUM.”

“Anthurium… That man in the forest?”

“AFFIRMATIVE.”

V gave a faint hum. He knew the book was certainly not the work of 9S. But as he looked around and compared the notes to what had been gathered, he suddenly understood why 9S looked so disheveled.

“He’s been hard at work, hasn’t he…?”

“UNIT 9S WANTED TO BE CAPABLE OF CARING FOR SUBJECT V IN THE EVENT OF PROLONGED ILLNESS.”

V pursed his lips, and carefully placed the book back on the plate. He crossed his arms, and found his fingers drumming busily at the handle of his cane. He had lost time. If not for his insistence on chasing the only unusual thing aside from himself, he might already have completed the rest of his work in Pod 042’s index. Instead he had been laid out for days, helpless. To wake and find that on top of his lost time, 9S had clearly spent the days anticipating things V might need was more than he could bear.

He paced busily around the bend, back to the other half of the floor’s barren space. There was nothing he needed there; he just couldn’t stand looking at so much of 9S’ effort. At least in that room it was basic needs.

The flowers drew his eyes to them. Bright and pleasant and entirely without practical purpose as far as he could tell.

 _Mostly_ basic needs.

V rubbed at the bags under his eyes, and reminded himself that 9S was built, not born. Everything that had happened in the ruins revolved around the echoes of humanity. 9S never said it outright, but between the reports and the way he was careful to keep V away from the standard androids, there had to be a sort of base imperative that made him keen on keeping humans safe. Some of this behavior had to be programming. But how much sway did that hold, exactly? Enough to find food and water, V could understand. Even Griffon had proved he could consider the basic needs of a human and take steps to acquire clothes.

9S was dozens of levels above that, though. Simple as a child, but every boast he made about his model type was proved through his constant absorption and integration of information on what a human needed.

That _still_ didn’t explain the flowers.

He paced back around the corner and nearly ran into 9S.

“Up already?” His mouth twisted and he looked V quickly up and down. “Well… you do look a lot better.”

V thought briefly of the pile of salt that had left his body, and quietly nodded. “I was just a bit quicker to rise than I should have been after being prone so long. I told you, I’m alright.”

“Just groggy?” 9S teased, upending the dripping mesh into one of the empty metal plates “There we go. You really do look a lot better; I guess you don’t need oranges after all.”

V blinked. He couldn’t tell if he was still sluggish or if 9S was simply riding a train of thought that he didn’t have the right ticket for.  “Oranges?”

“Yeah, do you like them? There’s a bunch of old orange trees in the forest kingdom. I tried to find some, but none of the ones I saw looked ready. The flowers were nice though, and the archives said it was common for sick humans to receive flowers, blankets, and tea.”

V sighed. So that was why there were flowers all over and a pot of boiled dandelions. And a blanket… “Is that why there’s a second cloak now?”

There was that shy but beaming smile again. Blindfold or no, there was nothing unreadable about that smile or his rapid chatter.

“I mean, it’s practical for me too. If I’m going to be going to the oasis I have to pay more attention to my sun exposure. Androids aren’t quite as efficient as humans at regulating body temperature, so we’re actually pretty susceptible to overheating. The desert is…well, you were there. It only gets worse on the way to the oasis.” He jumped up and gestured energetically at the freshly washed foliage. “But don’t worry about me! You haven’t eaten in like three days, don’t let me keep you!”

V had only been half listening. He was preoccupied with the flecks of dirt on 9S’ cheek and knees, and the mussed hairs sticking up from his head. He needed a bath almost as much as V did.

9S interrupted his thoughts by wagging one of the smaller bowls to him. A single soggy dandelion flower floated atop liquid the color of maple syrup.

V stared at the dubious offering. Clashing scents fill his nose and he looked wearily up at 9S. “Do you have the ability to taste?”

9S paused and leaned in conspiratorially. “Are we still playing 20 questions?”

V managed to suppress his sigh but not the dramatic roll of his eyes. He could beat this world’s gods at their own game but getting out of this silly game with 9S was clearly an impossibility.

"Sure."

Rather than ask a question immediately, 9S brought the cup toward his face. He hesitated at the last second. "Just how bad are you expecting this to taste?"

"Try it and find out,” said V. Perhaps this game wasn’t so bad after all.  

9S e gulped and parted his lips. He managed a short, noisy sip before his shoulders convulsed forward. His forearm rushed to cover his mouth, likely to keep him from spitting directly in V’s face. With a great deal of groaning, he managed to choke it down, but his grimace persisted, and he flapped his tongue rapidly as though that might get rid of the taste faster. "It's so bitter!!"

“Fancy that.” V relieved 9S of the cup to take his own sip. It was beyond bitter. The flavors of the roots, leaves, and flowers had all muddled together into an unpleasant, over-boiled mess. It was more like dandelion stew than tea. He eyed the ashes below the pot.

"Allow me to guess the nature of your experiment… You boiled your findings for an hour or two, because you believed that to be the secret to a stronger tea."

9S looked both crestfallen and amazed. "Yeah… How’d you know?”

"A young and foolish boy I once knew did the same the first time he tried to make tea for someone." V chuckled and let his eyes drop. “I will have to prepare a proper cup for you sometime. So you’ll know what it should taste like, of course.”

The wideness of 9S eyes could not be seen, but it could quite clearly be heard. “You know how to make tea?”

“Call it a hobby,” he said casually, and sat in front of the pile of greenery. “And that’s ten.”

It wasn’t the worst first attempt at finding plants to eat. He seemed to recall that Vergil’s first forays at feeding himself outside of civilization hadn’t gone…a lot worse. 

Across from him, 9S was discreetly attempting to snag something from the other side of the mound. In trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, he managed to be painfully obvious. All for a single white clover flower smaller than the buttons on his coat. He pressed it haltingly to his lips, his nostrils twitching as if to pick up some hint of another undesirably bitter experience. When he finally got on with it, he only nibbled it by half.

“It doesn’t taste like much,” he remarked a little sadly.

“No,” said V, chewing busily. “But it doesn’t have to.”

The meal could be called a salad by a generous onlooker. As V was no such thing, it was just a wet heap of clovers and mint. It wasn’t anything special, indeed, but the clovers were fresh, and the mint was cool, and after two weeks of fish and two days without any food at all, the tastes and textures were more than enough for V to eat every bite.

9S, who watched with a shy but sunny smile, had gone through a lot of effort, after all. 

He washed it all down with a bitter and lukewarm but thoughtfully made cup of dandelion tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've fooled you all, I like to cook as a hobby and this has all been an elaborate plot to write V teaching 9S about food.
> 
> (But no seriously this chapter made my heart so soft ;w;)


	26. Reflection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 16: V has some time to himself, but 9S' humanity has left his mind more restless than he'd like.

Faintly dandelion scented steam rose from the cauldron’s contents, which rippled with gently rolling bubbles. V hissed in a breath between his teeth. The wet fabric on the back of his neck stung at first touch but followed with blooming heat. His many aches and tensions dulled, finally finding relief he could not otherwise provide. He rolled and stretched his shoulders and craned his neck back to press the heat deeper into his bones. 

Not quite a hot bath, but close enough.

“You sure I can’t help?” said 9S, from somewhere behind him. “With the archive, I mean.”

“It would make the task go more quickly,” V admitted. “But I fear even I don’t know precisely what I hope to find.”

“What kind of things did you end up picking when you went through the index?”

“Anything related to the giant, the dragon, and your ‘demonic element’—maso.” With care to spare his hands, he dipped the cooling white cloth back into the scalding water, twisted away the excess, and pressed it lower down his back. “There were more subjects that caught my eye, but my rationale could be fleeting. The hunch of a moment is hard to explain, and ill-suited to make a rule of.”

A faint hum answered, then a shuffle. “Hey, your back is kind of reddish yellow at the bottom.”

V’s grip on the resistance shirt tightened, sending a pattering of droplets to the concrete. “I could swear we had discussed the subject of privacy before.”

“You’re wearing pants!”

“That isn’t the point.” He glared over his shoulder at the support pillar that 9S had been politely standing behind. “My desire for privacy isn’t based on my state of dress.”

“Fine, fine, sorry.” He retracted back around the corner, out of sight. “…Does it hurt?”

It was hard to remain frustrated when he asked so tenderly. “It’s just from laying down for too long on solid stone. It will heal. What of you?”

“Me? I’m fine, why?”

“From the moment I woke, it was clear that you have been ignoring your maintenance.”

9S remained hidden behind the pillar, but the pout on his face was easily pictured by his petulant mumble. “I’ve been busy taking care of you…”

Leaving the half-wrung shirt draped over the lip of the cauldron, V stood. He rounded the pillar and planted the handle of his cane under 9S’ chin to ensure his gaze didn’t wander. “It was you who gave your word you would take better care of yourself. Should your body fail, I am no more capable of repairing you than you were me. Do you not understand that? I would have no choice but to seek aid from other androids in order to fix you.”

“You’d actually go that far to repair me?”

V’s head dropped into a tilt. He had hoped to instill the seriousness of the problem into 9S—he didn’t know anything about androids or the first thing about how their bodies could fail or be repaired. Instead he was met with a face he couldn’t read and body language that looked timid according to their size difference, but not actually intimidated.

He imagined they were both sharing the same incredulous expression, albeit for different reasons.

9S suddenly cleared his throat and made a dozen half-formed jerky motions. “You’re right, it’s best it doesn’t come to that. Since you’re doing okay, I’ll just—leave and--go get maintained at the camp! I’ll have Pod 153, so if you need me just—just tell Pod 042!”

He squeezed out from between V and the pillar with a wiggling motion not unlike a mildly inebriated worm and was out of the nearest street-facing window before V could even think of something to say.

_Aww, you made a little friend, Shakespeare._

Without granting Griffon a response, V reached behind his back and touched his cane to the sensitive spots along the base of his spine. They were tender still, but nowhere near as bad as when he had discovered them.

Most of the previous day was spent furiously completing the last of his index search whether 9S was present or not. Now he was in between tasks, well fed, and invigorated by almost having a hot bath. It was the first time since waking that he was truly alone with his unoccupied thoughts. A space filled no sooner than he realized its emptiness.

Before the cauldron, he slowly ran the blissfully hot water through his hair, but the joy of it was lost in the distracted biting of his lip. His healing seemed quick, but he couldn’t truly say. Before, he had been as much as construct of magic as a thing of flesh and blood. An effigy of the human he might have been had his demon blood never awakened. He had existed on remnants of that blood and its energies. When they waned with the passing weeks, his form had crumbled like stone. The reverse case seemed to be so in this place. Whether it was the maso feeding him or that he had already technically reunited with himself, he was less a construct and more flesh and blood.

More complete than a mere shadow, too much a shade of Vergil to be whole, too demonic to be human, and too human to be a demon…

What exactly was he now?

Such concerns had no answer or end, so he wrung them from his mind as impersonally as he wrung the water from his hair. He was V. Someone who had once been Vergil, and who might be again. To return could very well mean his sublimation back into the whole. No matter. He had done it once. He would do it again if it got him back to the home in his mind’s eye.

That didn’t mean he couldn’t be comfortable while he worked on that, of course.

“Pod?” A friendly whir answered him. “I noted your index had a very large section on preserved literature.”

“AFFIRMATIVE. POD ARCHIVES CONTAIN APPROXIMATELY 97,000 HUMAN TEXTS ON A VARIETY OF DISCIPLINES.”

“Including poetry.” In truth he preferred the feeling of a physical book, but if it came to it, he didn’t intend to be choosy. “What purpose does that serve for you?”

“REPORT: ARCHIVE IS PART OF COMPLIANCE WITH THE HUMAN HERITAGE RESTORATION AND RECLAMATION BRANCH OF THE ARMY OF HUMANITY. IT ALSO ALLOWS PODS TO PROVIDE SUPPORT REGARDING THE USEFULNESS OF ANY HUMAN RELICS ENCOUNTERED.”

He pushed his hair back out of his face and squinted up at the pod. “Until the recent report came out, androids must have believed in humans enough to preserve their remains.”

“AFFIRMATIVE. IT ALSO SERVES TO RECORD THE NATURE OF STRUCTURES BEFORE MACHINE REBUILDING EFFORTS.”

“Machines rebuild things other than themselves…?”

“MACHINE LIFEFORMS ARE KNOWN TO RECREATE AREAS DESTROYED IN MAJOR MISSIONS. A SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF THIS ZONE WAS REBUILT BY MACHINES. HYPOTHESIS: THIS MAY BE RELATED TO INFORMATION ABOUT HUMANITY ENTERING THEIR NETWORK, OR THEY MAY HAVE MIMICKED ANDROID EFFORTS TO REPAIR AND MAINTAIN HIGH-PRIORITY LEGACY STRUCTURES DAMAGED DURING SKIRMISHES.”

A low, humorless laugh escaped V. “This earth is so akin to a garden, yet it is filled with lost children fighting over the legacy of beings they never even knew.”

The bitterness of his own words struck him when Pod did not answer. V sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. Perhaps it was his refreshed and vivid memory that had him drawing unpleasant comparisons. He shook the resistance shirt out and left it on the ground to dry.

“Come,” he said, rising to his feet. “Fresh air would serve me well.”

* * *

 

Machine reconstruction efforts made sense of something that had bothered V. Unable to identify the source of his unease, he had alternated between shrugging it off or assuming it was the knowledge that he was the only human on the planet.

It was the design of some of the less damaged buildings. They looked like children’s drawings of what a building should look like: concrete rectangles of varying dimensions and orientations with dark, square holes at regular intervals. Only the oldest, most unstable structures look like they weren’t built based on a vague idea of what a building should look like. To traverse the safer sections of the ruins where reconstruction had occurred was to walk amongst imitations that lacked the fine details that allowed any sense of reality.

Even the skyscraper he camped in was just glorified stack of empty floors, and suddenly it made sense why. They weren’t made with any purpose, so their interiors had no doors, no separating walls, and no purely aesthetic choices. They were just blank spaces with stairwells connecting one identically barren floor to the next.

The blank uniformity set his teeth on edge now that he saw it for what it was. When he finally came to an older building, with its boarded-up windows in irregular places and a few shreds of what must have once been carpet inside, he couldn’t help but sigh. He leaned in the shade. This world could be beautiful, but the ruins had lost some of their lonesome charm and now felt to him like a mockery.

Before he could get too comfortable, his tattoos squirmed. “You climbed the Qliphoth and some knock off architecture is what gets under your skin?” said Griffon, his leering eyes aglow with mirth. “You sure you shouldn’t be back in bed letting your _nurse_ take care of you?”

V smirked and plucked a bit of grass from the edge of his coat. “I could tell him I had a taste for poultry.”

“Yeah, and he’d cook me on the spot.” He perched carefully on a listing but sturdy wall. “You should start asking for weirder and weirder shit, see how much of it he actually brings you.”

“I already requested salt and couldn’t get that.”

“Oh, you got it alright,” Griffon sniggered. “Just not from the kid and a lot more than you wanted.”

V grimaced and brushed at his forearms. His eyes meandered over the differences between the truly ancient buildings and the reconstructed ones. It was hard to imagine 9S or any of the equally slender female YoRHa models doing construction, but so far all he had seen of other androids was Anthurium and occasionally another female model with him at the forest outpost.

Griffon, ever in tune with his desires, squawked out the most unsophisticated possible version of the question forming in V’s mind. “Yo soda can, what’s the deal with the normal droids?”

“THE DEAL?”

“Yeah, they yesterday’s news or wh—HUGKH!”

V retracted his cane from the feathers pillowing Griffon’s throat. “What my support unit means to ask is the difference between YoRHa and other androids.”

“SUBJECT IS COVERED IN THE YORHA FILES PROVIDED TO SUBJECT V PREVIOUSLY. DO YOU REQUIRE A SUMMARY?”

“No.” His brows drew together, the question still formulating. There was no succinct way to ask for it. “Tell me how non-YoRHa androids operate and organize.”

“AFFIRMATIVE. ARMY OF HUMANITY ANDROIDS ARE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE UNITS RUN ON FUSION REACTORS ORIGINALLY DEVELOPED THROUGH MASO RESEARCH. THE MAJORITY OPERATE FROM ONE OF NINE ORBITAL MILITARY BASES.

EARTH-BOUND UNITS OCCUPY STRATEGIC LOCATIONS ON PERMANENT DEPLOYMENT FOR RESOURCE GATHERING OR PRESERVATION PURPOSES. RESISTANCE CAMPS ARE OFTEN LEFTOVER ANDROIDS FROM PREVIOUS DESCENT MISSIONS. MOST ARE OBSOLETE MODELS WHO CONTINUE TO FIGHT AGAINST MACHINES INDEPENDENT OF OFFICIAL COMMANDS. INTERFACE WITH OTHER ANDROIDS ON THEIR PART IS LARGELY FOR SUPPLY TRADE.”

He gazed back across the ruins toward the resistance camp. “Are they all as human as 9S?”

“NEGATIVE. ANDROIDS ARE NOT HUMAN.”

“Quacks like a fuckin’ duck if you ask me,” said Griffon. “Get with the program soda-can, V knows they’re made of metal, he’s asking if they all _act_ human.”

“ALL ANDROIDS HAVE MEMORIES OF HUMAN LIFE IMPLANTED PRIOR TO ACTIVATION IN ADDITION TO AI WHICH INFORMS PERSONALITY. IN THE MOST RECENT GENERATION OF YORHA ANDROIDS, THIS SYSTEM WAS COMPRESSED INTO MORE SOPHISTICATED PERSONALITY DATA TO ENSURE ALL DEFAULT PERSONALITY TYPES PRODUCED MODELS THAT BEHAVED IDENTICALLY AT ACTIVATION.”

V drove his hand through his still-damp hair. He was aware of his jaw growing as tight as the grip on his cane, and the pulse of his heart racing in his ears. ‘Why’ sprung to mind as the obvious question, but he shot a glare at Griffon, silently warning him that any breach of silence would cost him more than a playful jab. ‘Why’ was small and he was far, far beyond it.

“Androids were never going to receive black boxes,” he said, his voice a rumble with the same timbre as a volcano considering an awakening after a long sleep. “YoRHa was only for combat data and that foolish lie about humanity.”

“AFFIRMATIVE. STANDARD AI WOULD REMAIN THE DEFAULT DESIGN.”

“What does the black box actually do that AI could not?”

“THE BLACK BOX CONTAINS THE YORHA UNIT’S CONSCIOUSNESS DATA. THROUGH UPLOAD OF DATA TO THE BUNKER, MEMORIES COULD BE TRANSFERRED TO A NEW BODY WITH LIMITED BREAK IN FLOW OF CONSCIOUSNESS. THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE WITH STANDARD AI DUE TO COMPLEXITY OF NEURAL NETWORK.”

“How funny that an AI considered such their plans too cruel for other AI, but not to the convenient beings they powered with their enemies’ hearts.” The flow of blood rushing through his ears and heating his chest bordered on pyroclastic, and his laughter was as deep and black as the smoke of an all-consuming fire. “The androids should be proud. Such pointless prejudice is very human indeed.”

“QUERY: WHAT IS THE REASON FOR SUBJECT V’S ANGER?”

Dozens of reasons came to mind, but none were sharper than the lingering image of 9S crying over V’s body. V had thought him so incongruously made ever since they met. An overgrown devil breaker in the shape of a person, capable of thought and so much more. A soldier built in the image of a boy who smiled and laughed and sulked; whose eyes sometimes went so dull and tired V thought he might shut down on the spot.

9S wasn’t human, but he was still just a child whose whole world had unraveled from under his feet, mourning it seemingly without even understanding that what pained him at times was grief _._ He had lost 2B, and probably so much more that he wouldn’t yet discuss.

Unlike V, 9S had been _designed_ powerless.

His abandonment by his makers was not the misunderstanding of a frightened child but the end goal of his creation. He understood, more than he wanted to, why 9S looked the way he did when they met. Unstable. _Feral._ Ready to die if it got him any respite from not only the designs of his creators but being tormented by his enemy.

To see a worse version of his own life crafted so intentionally and so needlessly burned in V’s gut more than any salt.

Humming interrupted the black stream of his thoughts.

His eyes flicked to Griffon. He held out his cane to stay him and craned his body to find the source.

In a pool of light beside the leaning remains of a building, a female android stood before a sad and scraggly rosebush. She was easily the largest android he had seen yet. Over six feet, though not quite up to his height, with pale brown skin and loose black hair under a headdress he didn’t recognize. And she wasn’t humming. She was…singing _._

Serene notes filled the distance between them and bounced off the skeletal remains of the structures around them. For a fleeting moment, V was held rapt. It was the first song he had heard in this world—sung by an android. One wearing the telltale worn fatigues of the resistance androids, though the deep green and richly gold-embroidered cloak covering her back suggested she might be of some importance.

A pressingly large gun hung over her shoulder.

He gestured to Griffon, putting a finger to his lips, and ducked inside the unblocked hole of a nearby window opening. The humming cut off instantly, replaced by the click of the gun’s safety being removed. Her hearing was certainly not human. Her footsteps crept in, practiced and near silent.

V readied his cane. Shadow’s tattoos twitched as she prepared to make the first rush. Griffon could follow up. Hopefully the electricity worked as well on androids as it did on machines.

Before any of them could make a move, the pod drifted out.

“RESISTANCE LEADER ANEMONE CONFIRMED,” he said casually. “GOOD EVENING, ANEMONE.”

“A pod…?” she said, with a lilt of recognition. “What are you doing out here alone?”

“THIS POD IS ON A SURVEYING TASK FOR YORHA UNIT 9S.”

Her boots appeared just around the corner from where V crouched. Her gun shifted, but V didn’t hear her click the safety back into place. “I didn’t think you could leave your assigned units.”

“AFFIRMATIVE. YORHA UNIT A2 LACKED THE AUTHORITY AND INTERFACE TO TRANSFER POD OWNERSHIP. TECHNICALLY, THIS POD IS STILL REGISTERED TO HER IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE FINAL ORDER OF YORHA UNIT 2B.”

A soft laugh answered, as did the rustle of the gun being safely settled back over Anemone’s shoulder. “I see. They didn’t have anything like you back then… Would’ve been useful.”

“QUERY: WHY IS ANEMONE ALONE SO FAR FROM THE RESISTANCE CAMP?”

“Mmm…” Her feet shifted slightly toward the rosebush. “Just greeting an old friend.”

“CAN A FLOWER BE CONSIDERED A FRIEND?”

“For me, yes. Maybe even something more important than that.” She shuffled closer to where the pod must have been floating, just out of V’s line of sight. A slightly metallic rasping tickled his ear—the sound he associated with his gloves brushing the pod’s surface.

“Up in that tower…” said Anemone. “Was A2 able to find peace?”

“…UNKNOWN. HOWEVER, THIS POD BELIEVES SO.”

She laughed again—a worldly and welcoming sound. “I’m glad. …You and 9S be careful out here.”

Her boot steps moved in the other direction, pausing briefly beside the rosebush before continuing back into the ruins.

Pod drifted back down to the open window and clicked his claws in a somehow satisfied way. “CONFRONTATION AVERTED.”

V smirked, and re-emerged from his impromptu hiding spot. “I suppose so.”

Griffon ruffled his feathers and flew to the rose bush to peek in the direction Anemone had gone. “Would certainly be more interesting around here if scanner boy was built like that.”

V’s shoulders sagged and he stared with pinched and painful eyes after his familiar. It may have been his exposure to Nico, but he had a weakness for women who could probably kill him. Android women included, it seemed.

“She’s the resistance leader then,” he said, opting to ignore Griffon.

“AFFIRMATIVE. WOULD SUBJECT V LIKE ANEMONE’S UNIT DATA?”

He recalled seeing something about that in the index. “Did I include any unit data in my pass through?”

“NEGATIVE.”

“Add it. All of it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not going to pretend this is all a 1:1 of actual automata lore minutiae because honestly it's a lot to keep up with. Much like the thing with the church and the watchers, these are the artistic interpretations I'm making.


	27. Little [B]oy Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 17: In order to find a special something, 9S spends a day with resistance androids.
> 
> TW: Suicidal thoughts, and I think an android panic attack

“The  _mattress?”_

Anemone’s confusion made 9s wince. He’d worried about getting a response like that. “I know it’s a weird ask.”

Her eyebrows drew closed and she uncrossed her arms to drop her hands to her hips. “Whatever you’ve been doing out there isn’t hurting any of my people, so it’s none of my business, but you could just stay here in the camp.”

“Thanks...” He hoped she knew he meant it. “But I don’t belong here.”

“I see.” She frowned, and her gaze momentarily turned inward. “You must already know I can’t just let you walk out of here with it. Are you willing to work for it?”

9S gave a small, familiar smile. “Same old chores, huh? What do you need?”

“We’re trying to re-establish the desert outpost while the city machines remain non-hostile. Our numbers are low and so are our supplies, so every extra hand helps.” She bobbed her chin up over his shoulder toward a slim android clad in dark green. “That’s Pine. She’s leading the effort. Stick with her and get the job done and the mattress is yours.”

Pine proved to be the assistant intelligence officer to Jackass, mercifully devoid of any of the latter’s more coarse habits. He didn’t recall having met her personally before, and if she had seen him before, she didn’t make a conversation point out of it. Everything about her, from the way she carried herself to the way she carried her tools, was measured and efficient.

21O would probably have liked her.

“Put your seatbelt on.”

“Huh?”

She slid into the driver’s seat of the truck and started the engine. “Gonna need you to pay more attention. This isn’t like those fancy flight suits y’all used to ride around. It’s primitive and the suspension is shot from these roads.” She pulled a black strap conscientiously over her one shoulder down to the opposite hip and clicked it into place.

“ **Seatbelt** ,” she repeated.

She took off without waiting. His body jerked back in the seat and he had to fight the nauseating bob and bounce of the truck to get his seatbelt on. The moment it clicked, he gripped his corner of the vehicle and stared in horror between her and the road. She drove as meticulously as she did everything else, but it felt like he could be tossed out onto the street any minute.

“Is the suspension being busted this bad?!”

The truck lurched to a stop. She twisted around and peered through the back window as they reversed. “Nah, I’m just not a very good driver.”

He stared, but her task-focused expression made it impossible to tell if she was joking. Soon enough they were beyond the worst of the roads and 9S could cautiously enjoy Pine’s sensible cruise speed.

“You paying attention?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Her mouth twisted. “Don’t do that. Pine is fine. Listen, watch your back today.”

“Do you expect enemy hostility?”

“No. It’s dead out there. Worst we’ve seen is an occasional wave of those screaming bastards that run up on you and explode while you’re still trying to figure out what the hell is happening. What you’re gonna want to watch is the other androids.”

Caught up in the cloud of caring for V, 9S hadn’t really considered he might encounter aggression toward him during this errand. But he couldn’t say he was surprised. “Oh.”

“Don’t make that face.” She sped up. “Anemone wouldn’t throw you to the wolves. No one is expendable to her. But I’m warning you that there’s a lot of different opinions about YoRHa right now and they’re not all sweet on you.”

“What about you?”

“I’m not gonna step in to save your ass if that’s what you mean. You brought down the tower, defend yourself. What am I gonna do, write you up?”

“No I—I mean your opinion.”

Pine shrugged and turned a little too quickly onto the empty, mercifully intact road that led from the southwest corner of the city all the way north to the desert. The engine’s putting sputter rose to a guttural growl. Her eyes were hard, and she might not have realized she was no longer driving at a sober speed.

“Don’t know what I think. Don’t know that I care about the fine details of your make. Bottom line is you are a one-of-a-kind model now. You may be instrumental in finding the people who came up with YoRHa."

Killing his makers wasn’t a novel thought. That daydream had slithered thought him a few times, not in the throes of the omni-directional hatred that had once consumed him, but with the same cold and specifically aggrieved way Pine talked about about it. Among the stars in the orbital bases that housed android forces, there had to be Command-types who knew. Somewhere up there were androids who spent their time thinking up ways to create newer, better androids, and they had spent almost a decade waiting for Project YoRHa to return results. He imagined looking into the eyes of the people who thought him up. Demanding answers, making his displeasure known, maybe even hearing their rationale before ending their lives.

For Pine and Jackass, it was more than a passing fantasy.

In his chest, the pulse of his black box slowed to a muffled creep. What they intended was another bleak war waged by garbage just as derelict as he was, for a revenge that wouldn’t change anything. And what else was there for them to do? After so many of their friends’ lives had gone to waste, this was all they had. This was their Tower and YoRHa’s creators were the network they hoped to kill at the top. It was where they would lose what was left of their faith and quite possibly their minds, and all he hoped was that something worthwhile awaited them once they brought it all crumbling down.

Maybe killing the machines for the rest of their lives would be enough. They weren’t YoRHa. There was nothing for them to think about if they did. No unsettling similarities. No machine’s agonized memories rattling around inside of them.

9S turned his gaze out the window and tried to keep his mind and body steady against the exhausting weight of it all. They were only just pulling up toward the sand-scoured remains of skyscrapers that landmarked the previous desert outpost, and he already wanted to leap out of the truck and run back to where V was.

He wouldn’t. The whole point of all of this was the bruise on V’s back. If he got sick again, this time 9S would ensure he had somewhere to rest that wouldn’t hurt his body. And more than his comfort or his well-being, 9S found though Pine’s words that he had a growing well of gratitude for V that he probably couldn’t have expressed in words.

The mattress would do as a thank you.

They slowed to a stop just ahead of a group of maybe a dozen other androids. A quick, meaningful flick of the eyes from Pine reminded him of her warning. He nodded grimly and stepped out of the truck.

A ripple went through the group immediately. Eyes and heads picking up, snapping away from Pine to his smaller,  more conspicuous black-clad shape.

He didn’t know any of them. The only one he faintly recognized was a female unit that was occasionally at Anthurium’s outpost.

“If you’re gonna gawk, get lost!” Pine snapped. “If you’re here to work, line up. I don’t wanna be out here all day.”

Half the group hopped into line, a quarter more slunk into place, and one made a big show of marching cross-armed into position. Two remained locked onto 9S. Both were female models, one taller with short hair and goggles, and one shorter with brown hair and the sort of grayish blue eyes he was accustomed to seeing on YoRHa models.

 _Guess those are the ones I’ll have to watch today,_ he thought wearily.

The shorter one marched toward him. He clenched his fists and silently opened the lock-on channel of the FFCS. Someone yelped a warning, but neither of them heeded it.

Up close, her eyes were as gray as ash. There was a slight imperfection in each one—a sliver of reflective material that previously caught the color of the unclouded desert sky and now reflected the sand. It gave her that same animal look that he recalled from the androids in the coliseum. But when she grabbed him by his collar, he could feel the restraint in her shaking forearms. 

“Did you know?” she demanded between bared teeth. “Did you know any of it?”

“...After the Bunker fell." He quietly closed the channel to his FFCS. "That’s when I found out. Before that…”

The leather of his coat creaked in her fists, and her eyes and teeth clenched along. Like she was imploding—drawn into a black hole that had opened up somewhere inside her.

From the line-up of their peers, a soft-eyed female model leaned out. “Gladiolus… Put him down.”

9S dropped unceremoniously into the dust. Above him, Gladiolus cursed and marched into her. She still looked mad at the entire world, but for now she had decided not to take it out on him.

Pine rolled her eyes “Anybody else have any outbursts they wanna get out of the way?  _Aconite?”_  The taller female model who had lingered back shrugged and took her time meandering into place. Pine looked down at 9S. “You waiting for something? Get up, let’s get to work.”

* * *

 

**6:57 PM**

The task of clearing the rubble is parsed into a neat and well-planned series of tasks: Investigate the intended site for volatile materials, clear the smaller towerfall, blast the larger towerfall, clear the remainder, conduct salvage if possible, final clear, and re-establishment of the camp.

It is no surprise to 9S that he’s on point for the first job. Two resistance members are paired with him for the task: One male model called Alstroemeria, who insisted 9S call him Emery, and another called Wormwood.

His abilities as a scanner and the insights of Pod 153 end up doing most of the front work. He identifies evidence of unexploded munitions, and evidence of a lye spill. The substance is not to be to be taken lightly even by the most advanced android, but it represents a special problem for resistance members. The protective silicone casing has given way in places for many of them. With galvanization exceptionally common among androids assigned to ocean-bordering zones, they are at risk of not only having their components corroded, but of creating dangerous emissions of hydrogen gas.

Clean-up is not his job. With his contributions exhausted, he stands by while the other two work on extraction.

Emery talks almost the entire time. He is massive and loud and what 9S imagines a friendly boar would be like if it could talk. He doesn’t seem to bear any ill will at all toward YoRHa, and a substantial part of his chatter is reassuring 9S that he was as much as android as any of them. Such a noisy personality is jarring and a little tiring for 9S, but he makes the effort to accept the vast stores of the older model’s energy.

“They just raised all this silicone up out of the ground like we’re not starving for the stuff,” Emery laments. “Machines never fail to surprise me. Me and my brother, you know, we’ve been down here around since the 11th Descent mission and every day it feels like we learn something new."

“Is that why you’re so…” 9S raises his hand up high, somehow embarrassed to acknowledge the difference in their size. It shouldn’t have mattered, especially since 9S was the more advanced model, but being called a child by V has left its mark on him. “I read that back they there was a lot of diversity in android body types due to experiment—ah!”

Wormwood brushes between them and holds up a chalkboard with a mission-related question on it.

“Yeah, that’d be good,” Emery answers, crossing his arms. “You shouldn’t be so rude though.”

Wormwood silently returns to work. There is a dispassion to the set of his thin face and the way he moves that seems less like rudeness, and more like he doesn’t notice anyone is on the job but him and Emery.

 

**9:09 PM**

9S is left off the physical portion of clearing the smaller tower fall. Hard physical labor, while not entirely impossible, isn’t what he was designed for. Pine doesn’t leave him much downtime but doesn’t give him jobs that might damage his primary functionality. Knowing what she thinks of him, he doesn’t mistake this for compassion.

His new team is composed of Aster, the soft-eyed one who had called out to Gladioulus, and an ancient ranged-attack model named Bouvardia. Their task is to transport the rubble into the desert—not far enough into the dunes to be a terrible idea, but far enough that they swapped specialty wheels onto the truck. He and Bouvardia act as escort while Aster drives. She pays them little mind. Her attention to the road is as meticulous as Pine’s, and she gives the impression she is there to do the job and not waste energy on anything else.

Because the machines are inactive, the job is boring. He spends his time stealing looks at Bouvardia, who is a relic old enough to have visible silicone paneling on his face. A few pairs of black bands circle his joints, likely to keep the elements out of places that had long since become so obsolete that they couldn’t be repaired properly.

“Em give you any trouble?” he asks with a voice as rough as the truck engine between them.

The name stalls in 9S mind for a moment before he understands the even shorter nickname for Alstroemeria. “You’re his brother?”

Bouvardia gives a dim smile, like he’s heard the question beneath what 9S actually asked a hundred times.

He and Emery share no resemblance because they are not a paired model type. Bouvardia had arrived during the 8th Descent, and found Emery almost broken in the middle of the 11th. Both had artificial memories of having siblings. They took care of each other and any android they found that shared that trait.

It sounds to 9S like they had a sizable family once. Now it was just the two of them

“It’s an old model’s job to take care of models like you.” He hesitates, as if realizing how that must sound. “New models, I mean. You get wrapped up in your heads a lot.”

9S feels a sort of déjà vu. Bouvardia is much clumsier about it, but he has some of what he often senses in Anthurium and has come to notice in many older models.

Do they know something about living that he doesn’t, he wonders. Is it only age that makes them so different?

 

**10:00 PM**

9S is relegated to machinery check while more familiar androids set charges to destroy the larger debris. His partners in this are a brusque, hard-faced android called Statice, and a baby-faced unit barely any larger than he was by the name Freesia.

Statice is cold. There is no writing it off or ignoring it. But 9S thinks this surly demeanor might be natural personality rather than specific animosity at YoRHa. He doesn’t respond to Freesia’s not-so-subtle attempts to direct the conversation to just what the nature of a YoRHa unit is. After a handful of awkward dodges of the subject from 9S, Statice buries his answer in the subject with the finality of a maul striking a porcelain cup.

“If he’s a machine, those Red Girls threw him away. If he’s an android, the Army of Humanity built him like that. As long as he kills machines, I don’t care and neither should you.”

It is a refreshingly practical position—one that doesn’t leave 9S the center of attention so much as Pine’s.

Freesia struggles to let the topic go. She insists on being friendly and accommodating with such aggressive, syrupy excess that even 9S is repulsed. Finally, she utters words that remind 9S he absolutely still has a hole in his being where a mutinous, feverish violence lurks.

“I think you must just be a very nice machine, just like Pascal!”

Across the dusty road, the tall, goggled android Pine had called Aconite snorted and leered over at him with a grin that even Griffon couldn’t have matched.

He cannot remember what follows those words. There was a clenching of his jaw—so hard he had imagined a tooth snapping out of his mouth and shooting right through her skull. Things go dark as he imagines her shocked, dying face. The next thing he knows, Pod is saying something about a system restart due to dangerous black box temperatures. The few seconds of disorientation are enough for Freesia to have wandered away, and he quietly stuffs that part of himself back inside the pit it nearly erupted from.

 

**10:37 PM**

They clear the area for blasting. There are no pairs; it is up to 9S to find a safe spot to withdraw to. Instinctively, he follows the android he recognized from Anthurium’s outpost. Her name is Balm. She greets him nicely enough but isn’t in a hurry to say much to him. He passes her by to find his own spot when she settles down with her back to the curve of the cliff face.

The charges detonate. Under the body-shaking thunder of it, a shriek reaches his aural system too late for him to react. The air rains white rubble and sand and a woman he can barely see snatches him by his neck. She yanks him upright with vicious strength. Like a rabbit being swung in the jaws of a wolf, his overtaxed senses struggle to keep up. Profanities he cannot understand exit her in frothing barks, reporting as sharply as gun fire.

“Why did you have to go digging around where you weren’t wanted?!” Oh. “Did it feel good?! Stroke your fucking scanner ego?!” Oh god, _please._ “You took **_everything_** from us! You robbed us! What good did the truth do for any of us in a stupid fucking world like this?!”

She rams him against the cliffs, and the impact is an echoing rattle that brings down more grit. “You trash—you **_failure_** —all you had to do was **DIE**!!!”

“ _Cypress.”_

Balm appears in the mostly settled dust, and Cypress releases him.

9S sees finally that Cypress’ eyes are brown, but blackened by her hatred of him. Her face is caked with dust and she would seem tanned if not for the chaotic tributaries of tears cutting through the grime and revealing pale skin beneath.

"You're no better than those twins," she spits, kicking the cliff beside his head. "You should have been buried under the tower with them."

She storms off. 9S remains on the ground shivering, his body as rattled as his mind. Balm offers him a gentle hand and help him to his feet.

If she spoke at all, 9S did not hear her.

 

**10:58 PM**

9S doesn’t mention anything, even when Pine stares at him.

 

**11:03 PM**

Emery is prying in his well-meaning way.

9S remains silent. He is afraid of what he will say if he allows himself to speak.

Bouvardia calls his brother away, and 9S shoots him a painfully thankful look, not remembering that his blindfold prevents that kind of silent communication.

 

**11:46 PM**

“Rusty.”

Someone snickers. It’s a term heard often in the android coliseum, one with less dignity than being called by a dog’s name.

9S stares unemotionally at his work, without bothering to look for the source. He already knows it’s Aconite, who had steadfastly refused to let Freesia’s innocent but intensely demeaning comment fly.

He hears someone swat Aconite, but the both laugh. That would be Lobelia, then. It isn’t the first of his spiteful whispers. Whenever 9S is in earshot, he oozes out from somewhere and speaks casual malice to the nearest android. With Aconite, he finds an open ear.

“He came to the coliseum a week or two ago,” he gossips. “He looked nervous. I think he was sympathetic to his kin.”

“Are you sure it was sympathy?” Aconite asks, just loud enough to be heard. “Machines don’t feel things, it’s just imitation, isn’t it?”

“The ones that look like androids are better at it. Remember the one who berserked the whole network? YoRHa was probably like that. Machines wearing an android’s skin.”

_I didn’t ask for this! I DIDN’T ASK TO BE MADE!_

The magnitude of the thought is enough to crowd his other senses out, but it never comes close to his lips. He wishes silently that V didn’t exist, so he could attack them right then and there and hopefully be destroyed. Guilt immediately floods from his core programming.

Someone had to protect V. It couldn’t be androids like them. They weren’t worthy.  They didn’t deserve him.

9S doesn't believe he deserves V either.

 

**2:54 AM**

The job is nearly over.  9S is numb. He has been numb for hours.

He sits limp in the passenger seat beside Aster. Bouvardia and Statice trot just ahead of them. The larger debris has taken many trips and demanded deeper journeys into the desert. Something about the material having a strange property of sucking heat from the atmosphere, and the possibility of slowing the planet’s desertification.  

It sounds interesting, but 9S is simply not there.

“Hey.”

It is the first word Aster has spoken to him all night. Fresh tension tries to wind up in him but finds his nerves flaccid and unwilling. He closes his eyes and prays this will be quick.

The trucks slows just enough for him to notice, and in the silence between the sputters of the engine he hears a whisper.

“ _Thank you._ ”

The disbelief is enough to turn his head.

“Don’t stare,” she says, barely audible as the engine picks back up. “I don’t want them to know I’m talking to you.” Her slim fingers fidget. “But really, thank you.”

His tone comes out sluggish and warbling. “For _what_?”

Androids were not built to blush, but she didn’t need to. Everything he needed to know exists in the way her teeth nibble just inside her lip and the hesitant removal of one hand from the wheel to adjust her cloak.

“Gladiolus was really devoted to humans. Always fighting too hard, always—.” She stops herself, and glances out at Statice and Bouvardia. “Anyway, I’m grateful to you for discovering they were all dead.”

A soft smile that isn’t at all for him lights her brown cheeks. “Maybe now we can finally just go somewhere quiet and be together. Just the two of us until we break down...”

9S stares at her despite her earlier words. He realizes at some point that he is shaking again. Silently laughing. He doesn’t know why. What he does know, with sudden, breathless dread, is that he cannot bear to be in the truck with Aster for one more moment. He blurts something and claws his way out of the window, throwing himself into the sand. The truck screeches to a stop, but he is gone before he hears anyone call after him.

He doesn’t know where he is going, but he runs there. Pod’s mechanical voice calls out in urgent tones behind him, but something must be damaged again because he cannot understand her. His eyes are wide behind his visor, but the world is static and confusion and nothing all at once. There are things in his vision, passing him by at blurry speeds, but they are a shapeless noise between his sensors and processors; unrecognizable and unfamiliar.

 

**3:09 AM**

All that exists are his thumping steps carrying him to a destination he doesn’t know on the one pleaded thought keeping from  breaking:

I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.

 

**3:55 AM**

Above his head, a sea of lunar tears release specks of glowing pollen into the air. They resemble stars in the night sky—a sight he has not seen in over two months. It hadn’t struck him as special then. Why should it, when it was natural to him? YoRHa didn’t gaze at the stars. They gazed at the earth.

But now there is only 9S, and there is no Bunker to return to.

He will probably never see those stars again.

 

**5:02 AM**

V is sleeping.

9S places the mattress down beside him. It would do him a lot of good, he thinks, to move V onto it and see at least one good thing come out of this day, but he doesn’t want to risk waking him. 

In a moment partly curious and partly anxious for even the thinnest pretense of belonging, 9S lays down on it himself. A scent of mint and sweat and withered orange blossoms seeps from V. His breathing is near-silent, but 9S watches the easy contract and expand of his respiration.

For the first time in many long months, he closes his eyes and sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not gonna lie, I'm astonished 9S made it through this chapter without bawling (because I sure did)


	28. (Un)Complicated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 18: V finds the seedlings of a misplaced feeling, but it's too late to stop their growth.

“IN 2008, THE WALL OF JERICHO IS DESTROYED AND AS A RESULT, THE EXISTENCE OF LEGION AND RED-EYE BECOME PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE. THE SAME YEAR, THE RED DRAGON’S CORPSE IS MOVED TO A LAB AT AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION—“

“Note that,” said V, twirling the dusty, empty frames of the black glasses he had all but forgotten about.

A portion of Pod’s screen lit up in the exact kind of noxiously yellow neon highlight that could ruin the page of a book forever. As far as V could tell, Pod’s interface was staunchly in shades of beige and brown, so he had no idea why it had chosen such a color.

“EXCERPT SAVED. CONTINUING: IN 2009, IT WAS DECIDED THAT SHINJUKU SHOULD BE DESTROYED TO STOP LEGION INFESTATION. NUCLEAR BOMBS WERE EMPLOYED IN AUGUST OF THAT YEAR. THREE MONTHS LATER, LEGION ELIMINATION IN JAPAN WAS CONFIRMED.”

V paced across the roof an idle stroll while Pod droned on at his side. Having the information recited proved to be a much better tactic than trying to read it. His lack of context coupled with inevitable eye strain meant he could rarely make it through more than a few of the dense reports before he started to skip lines or worse, re-read them a dozen times without absorbing them. Though the slightly metallic touch to his otherwise pleasant voice was not the easiest thing to listen to for hours at a time, Pod 042 was not susceptible to human failings. As a bonus, V got to give some of his attention to other things.

Like how he had awakened that morning with 9S sleeping soundly beside him on a mattress.

Up close, 9S wasn’t as small he seemed. Vergil had been his size when he was maybe fourteen or fifteen. Vergil had also been wiry and scarred. 9S, despite being partly composed of wires, was slender and unmarred. Not a scrape on his knees or a scratch on his face or a weird scar from an ill-advised dare to be found. V doubted there was any scar tissue even around his replaced arm. 9S likely lacked the ability to form scars, in the same way he lacked pores or wrinkles or veins.

Even when he was a crumbling, questionably human construct held together more by magic than blood, V had been a highly convincing facsimile. Between the maso’s effects on him and just how uncanny an android was upon close inspection, he was might as well have been the genuine article. Humanity personified couldn’t be that divorced from the real thing.  9S makers had studied the source material more closely than the machines had studied the buildings they re-constructed, but his purpose denied him perfect replication. He was an imitation in the same way the statue of David was an imitation—exquisitely and ideally crafted, but fundamentally not the real thing.

That was what he thought now, anyway. In the moment of waking, he’d sat there, half propped up on a slab of concrete, gently turning over a dozen questions in his groggy mind—where had the mattress come from; why was 9S sleeping; when had he gotten back? Lucidity, when he had finally achieved it, had not brought lofty rationalizations about the android’s nature, but an instinctive reaction to just how lifelike he was. 

Nero had probably looked like 9S when he was still just a boy.

“ALERT: SUBJECT V HAS REMAINED SILENT THROUGH THREE MENTIONS OF THE LOCATION OF ‘DRAGON’.”

V rubbed at the bridge of his nose and held up a hand to pod. “We will have to go back. The last thing I heard was the report on Legion re-surfacing in China.”

“WOULD SUBJECT V LIKE TO RETURN TO VISUAL FORMAT?”

“No, I do prefer it recited. The fault for not hearing you is mine. My mind is elsewhere.”

“HYPOTHESIS: SUBJECT V IS EXPERIENCING DIFFICULTY CONCENTRATING DUE TO HUNGER. PROPOSAL: WAIT FOR SUPPORT UNIT GRIFFON TO RETURN WITH FOOD.”

V smiled faintly. Griffon was never going to let him live that request down. “It’s not hunger. Personal concerns.”

“PROPOSAL: SUBJECT V SHOULD MAKE USE OF THIS POD’S CONVERSATIONAL CAPABILITIES.”

V grinned over the empty rims of the glasses and laughed through his nose. “Your turn of phrase never fails to amuse me. But it’s…”

‘Complicated’ was the word that lurked just behind his teeth, but that was a coward’s word. Few things in life were genuinely complicated.

His situation? Uncomplicated. He was separated from Vergil in an alternate time or dimension, and all he had to do was to eat, drink, sleep, and read thousands of hours’ worth of readily accessible reports in search of a way home.

His relationship with Nero? Complicated. Finding out he was Vergil’s son meant trying to figure out if, by extension, he was also  _V’s_  son. To him, Nero had been a stranger who he thought was his nephew who became something like a friend. And while Vergil might be over forty, V was underdeveloped in proportion to the fore’s neglect for his human feelings. He was maybe a little older than Nero at best. At the same time, he certainly remembered—with some discomfort as he both was and wasn’t the one involved—the act that had brought Nero into existence.

He did wonder what things might have been like if he had known Nero existed. ‘He’ referring specifically to his present form. Impossibility of the scenario and his non-existent paternal feelings for the adult Nero aside, there was enough of that feeling there for him to instinctively hate the concept of Vergil raising Nero from childhood. It wasn’t even because Vergil was damaged or power hungry or immature—even though he was very much all those things.

He just couldn’t stomach Vergil raising Nero because he wouldn’t have become Nero as V knew him. He was a good man. Better than Vergil. More human.

To look at 9S and think of what Nero might have been like as young boy was not complicated in the slightest, but that was exactly what made it so troubling to acknowledge.

“9S reminds me of someone I know,” he said, more delicately that he liked. “Family.”

“AND THIS CAUSES PSYCHOLOGICAL DISCOMFORT?”

“Only when I forget he is an android, which I find myself doing more and more of late. I did not think he slept.”

“UNIT 9S DOES NOT REQUIRE SLEEP TO FUNCTION.”

“I had noticed. It begs the question why he chose to sleep.”

Pod’s antennae flicked up.  “UNIT 9S ACCEPTED A STRENUOUS MISSION IN ORDER TO PROCURE A MATTRESS FOR SUBJECT V. SUSPENSION OF NON-ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS WOULD PROMOTE RECOVERY.”

“And how do you know that?” V asked, wiggling the end of his cane just beneath the pod’s claws.

“THIS POD FREQUENTLY EXCHANGES DATA WITH POD 153.”

“Hm.” So that’s why he had been gone so long. Maintenance took him an hour or two, but he had been gone the better part of a day. All for a mattress. “Exactly what kind of ‘strenuous mission’ was it?”

“THIS POD UNDERSTOOD THAT SUBJECT V DID NOT LIKE TO PRY.”

V raised an eyebrow and slowly crossed his arms. “I’m not prying; I’m asking what he did that prompted him to sleep when he’s never done so before. It is a question of maintaining his function.”

Pod’s antennae rotated, lowered, and rose again. “UNDERSTOOD. SUBJECT V’S CONCERN FOR UNIT 9S IS NOTED. PROPOSAL: SUBJECT V SHOULD DISCUSS THE SUBJECT WITH UNIT 9S.”

Pod turned and clicked his alloy digits toward the trembling ladder, seemingly oblivious to V’s glare. He wasn’t as insufferable as Griffon, but he was growing bolder as the weeks passed.

9S trotted toward him with a half-spoken apology that died before it was done. He froze just out V’s reach, his face drained of warmth. His voice was too stony to suit the boyish bounce he’d had in his step only a moment ago. 

“Where did you get those?”

V lifted the glasses gingerly from his nose and peered at them from the corner of his eye. “They’ve been here since you found me, just under the table. You know them?”

9S lips tightened. He held out his hand, and curtly twitched his fingers for V to hand it over.

V’s eyes flicked again between the android and the glasses. Although he didn’t believe 9S would try to hurt him, his tension was infectious.  “Your blindfold.” 9S’ head twitched. “You’re agitated. I’d feel a lot better if I could see your eyes.”

9S tore the blindfold away. His expression was as closed as a tomb save eyes that burned cold but bright. He twitched his fingers again, more insistently, and V tossed the offending item into his waiting palm.

His fingers snapped closed like a bear trap around the delicate leg of a fawn. A few shards plinked to the concrete, but most found their end when 9S flung them from the roof with force that made V’s shoulders throb. 

The moment they were out of sight, 9S tugged his jacket straight and smoothed his shorts with a heavy sigh. “Sorry. Bad memory.”

“So I gathered.” In truth he was a little impressed. It was the most straightforward emotional reaction he’d seen yet. “I must ask…Who owned those glasses?”

“Why don’t you like to talk about your mother?” asked venomously.

Such innocent words, drowned in spite until they became profane. He knew 9S would ask something scathingly personal, but he hadn’t expected him to go right to the only boundary V had yet drawn. It mattered surprisingly little. He wanted to know who had put that much fear into 9S far more than he wanted to preserve the distance between them.

“She was murdered by my father’s enemies when I was only a child. Burned alive.”

9S flinched back as though V had struck him with his cane. The pitch of his frown and the lines of his eyes oscillated rapidly from fish-mouthed surprise and then to remorse, before a grimace of awful, dawning realization that he had to answer crowded out all else.

“I—” His eyes darted up to bygone trajectory of the broken glasses and down to their splintered remains on the ground. “His…name was Adam. He was a machine that took the shape of an android. He…” His fingers twisted around themselves as 9S wrestled with whatever experiences haunted him behind his inward-turned eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it, V… He’s dead. I didn’t want to ever think about him again.”

“Then don’t,” V said peaceably. “Your answer suffices.”

“That’s it? Why did you even ask!?”

V tilted his head. “Am I meant to probe further in spite of your displeasure?” He tapped his cane against the blindfold hanging from 9S’ fist. “I’ve never seen that kind of expression on your face. I wanted to know the reason.”

Something—Mistrust? Dread? —flickered in 9S’ eyes, there and gone in the flap of an insect’s wing before another emotion rose like a geyser.

“I’m not a  **TOY**!” A blur of a fist slapped the cane away and sent it pin-wheeling across the concrete. “Don’t just play with me because you feel like it! ‘In spite of my displeasure’, that didn’t stop you even though… Even though, I—!”

V thought the words were clear enough, but 9S was clutching his body like V had stabbed him. The geyser subsided as rapidly as it had come on. No tears fell, mercifully, but he buried his face in his hands.

“Please don’t look at me...” he whimpered, over and over in a small, pitiful voice.

V flexed his hand, wagging away the mild tingle where the cane had scraped his fingers.  It seemed to him that every time he asked 9S to take the blindfold off, he got more than he bargained for. This was not how he’d hope the question would go. What he thought was an old scar had ruptured like a blister at what he thought was a moderate prod. 9S’ chanting might have for him, or it might have been for whatever ghost of Adam he had roused, but V was responsible for it either way.

Here he’d thought he was the better of his two selves at dealing with people.

Telling himself it was no different than tightening a bandage around a wound, he reached carefully around 9S’ head and tied the ends of his blindfold back in place.

“I’m sorry.”

Startled from his feedback loop, 9S stumbled back, grasping his hands to his crookedly tied visor. He quickly adjusted back to his proper position and clutched at the strap over his chest. “Did you just...  _apologize_ to me?”

“I’m glad you heard me.”

9S’ jaw hung slack. As if remembering suddenly what had happened, he trotted away to retrieve V’s cane. When he returned and V tried to take it, he found the android’s grip didn’t yield. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have asked about your mother.”

V sighed wearily and tugged his cane until 9S handed it over. “Let someone else be fault for a day, 9S. The world will not run dry of remorse.”  

“I guess, it’s just…” 9S smiled, weakly but warmly, and self-consciously rubbed at his hair. “Never mind. We’re at twelve now?”

V smiled and gave a mild, good-natured roll of his eyes. “Eleven.” 

“Right, right… You uh, must be hungry, so I’ll just—”

“Griffon’s taking care of it.” 9S frowned, but his shoulders relaxed by an inch or two. Griffon’s smart mouth would have made the already awkward situation unbearable for them both, V imagined.  “Do you need to perform maintenance today?”

“No, I think I’m alright. Why, do you need me for something?”

It really was charming just how his cheeks brightened at the prospect of being helpful.  “I’d like to go bathe.”

“Okay. I’ll get some water for the cauldron.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

* * *

A slight tug on his cloak prompted V to look down.

9S peered back up at him, watching his face with all the keen intensity of a mother fretting over a sick child. “Do you hear anything?”

“Just the breeze.”

“You’re sure?”

“Even if I hear it, I have no intention of re-visiting the source. It’s best to not try the limits of one’s luck.”

9S released him, but as they walked the familiar paths through the forest, he remained close at V’s heel, diligently inspecting his face for any signs of disturbance. V couldn’t blame him, given what happened the last time they were there.

Such care, even if it was a little smothering, wasn’t terrible.

They stayed further upstream than usual, away from the ravine and the castle and the church in the woods. It took a few scoffs from V before they found a good location up against a cliff face that offered minimal shade due to the high angle of the sun, in exchange for rocky pools and gently babbling falls.

There were no convenient boughs, so V contented himself with sitting among a suitably private formation of stones nestles close to the trickling falls. It had its perks. The largest stone was flat and the moss sprouting on it was warm and springy, inviting him to rest his back against it.

Griffon perched at the height of the cliff. Supposedly he was up there to keep watch, but the animals passing by to drink were their only companions. Shadow tried coaxing 9s into a game, but he didn’t join her antics no matter how she pushed and pawed at him until finally she wandered away with an indignant snort to take a nap.

On the edge of V’s periphery, 9S sat cross-legged on a smooth stone. His back was politely to V, and his head tilted toward the open sky. The air between them was calm, if a bit distant.

V busily wrung water from his hair. “Why did you bring back a mattress?” 

9S was quiet a moment, formulating his question. “Are you any good at making clothes?”

V turned his head, squinting at 9S’ back. “In part… Is that important?”

“It’s autumn. I thought you might need warmer clothes, but I don’t really know anything about how to make them.”

Seasons, V realized. They were in a place with seasons. The temperature hadn’t changed much as far as he was concerned, and in the forest it was as hot and humid as ever. If it came down to it, they could probably winter over in the desert, but he didn’t want to think too much about what that was going to entail.

"The mattress was for your back," 9S answered. "I think concrete is pretty uncomfortable too, but it never occurred to me it could actually hurt you."

“What did you have to do for it?”

“Nothing special. Help restore the desert outpost.”

V rolled over, laying his stomach flat against the stone. “Do you trust Anemone?”

9S turned, as V suspected he would. His mouth opened, but he didn’t let himself get carried away by the knee-jerk question that must have crossed his mind. “Do you have any other family? Just mother, father, brother?”

“A son.” V smirked halfheartedly at himself and rested a hand on his chin. “But it’s complicated.”

“It’s like that with me and Anemone too. I trust her. I just…don’t necessarily trust the other resistance members.” He shrugged in a somehow lonesome way. “She can’t control what they think about me.”

“And what do they think about you?”

“Nothing I care to repeat,” 9S said after a brief pause. He rose from his chosen seat, only to immediately trips and falls face first into the water like a steel brick.

V didn’t know whether he should be alarmed or not. The water was even shallower here than in their usual spot.

“9S?” he called, to no response. “9S!”

“I’m okay! Just…!” A wet, leathery slap announced the tossing of 9S’ coat. “Damn…”

V moved to the very edge of the stones and peered over them. 9S was sitting waist-deep in water, his thin chest bared. He’d opened one of three paired panels on his torso and was holding something that looked like it came out of a vacuum cleaner.

“What is that?”

“A filtration component. I must have gotten sand in my fluid exchange yesterday.” He held it up to the light and pointed. “One of my joints just locked up from blockage and there’s sand in this.”

“So you _do_ need maintenance.”

9S shook his head, and his lips twisted in annoyance. “A fluid exchange without YoRHa-specific equipment would take way too much time. It's a pain but so long as I keep this clean it’ll all filter out in a day or two.”

V stared at the filter and wondered vaguely if Nico would have been able to work on something as delicate as it looked. So, he could get sand in his body that could damage his ability to walk… And he had been going through a sandstorm to get water this whole time?

“Perhaps get your water from here instead.”

9S looked up blankly. “What about the machine fish?”

"I'll live." V looked behind to the sloping cliff face. He leaned close to the nearest trickle and drank to his heart’s content. “I don’t need the purest water available, especially if getting it will damage you.”

“It’s fine," 9S said fumblingly. "It’s really not a big deal.”

“Probably not.” V wiped his mouth with a dainty touch, his eyes lowered as his lips twitched into a smile. “But I’d like for you to think of yourself a little more.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Bad News: 9S' freakout might be little jarring/might not make sense if you haven't read the novelization about his not-great experience with Adam.
> 
> The Good News: V can escape Vergil but he cannot escape his new, strange, and highly unresolved feelings toward the concept that he could have been raising a son back in Fortuna all that time.


	29. Round Robin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 20: Feeling restless after too many days of downtime, V opts to spend a day sparring with 9S.

"RECORD OF UNKNOWN PARTICLE PHYSICIST ASSIGNED TO EARLY RESEARCH ON ‘GIANT’ AND DRAGON’, PRE-DATING THE DESIGNATION OF ‘MASO’. INVESTIGATION REPORTS FOLLOW—"

V leaned against the sturdy table, absently running his fingers through Griffon’s feathers as he focused on Pod’s words. The early reports were simpler, emotional responses to the situation rather than hard information. Most of them were like that. Diaries of people who had lived and died in those times made up most of what Pod was able to provide. 9S sat atop the table beside him. Occasionally, he would swing his legs together in short, rapid, perfectly parallel arcs. His fingers rubbed and tapped at the wood. Perhaps something in the dense text interested him the way the mentions of 'Tissue D' and 'Particle G' peppered among signs of the beginning of mankind’s downfall interested V. Unfortunately, the reports began to disintegrate, as many did. 

First into personal matters, then into mentions of sleeplessness. Buzzing noises in the ears. Ringing. Tolling.

The final report came as a long pause, followed by a strange voice that sounded neither human nor mechanical, like the buzzing scream of a cicada layered over the chitinous roar of stampeding ants.

"2006/04/22

  

**I.**

**CA    N.**

 

**H   E           A R.**

 

**SO      U            ND  S.**

 

…END REPORT."

A breath that V didn't know he had held seeped out with the cold tingle that had crept up his spine. Out of the corner of his eye, 9S shivered and rubbed at his arms. Good, he wasn't just hearing things again.

Griffon shuffled his wings, his triplicate eyes reproachful. "You get possessed for a second there, soda can?"

"NEGATIVE. THAT IS HOW THE DATA READS."

"That was awful," said 9S. "You're gonna give V nightmares."

He hadn't had a nightmare since he arrived. Thin sleep, but at least dreamless. However, after a few days of listening to reports, he did find himself growing tense at lighter and lighter provocations. Nothing had tried to kill him since his brush with the gods. Unpleasant an experience as it was, he was well over it and getting twitchy.

Griffon and Shadow were restless too. While they were enjoying the long days of sun-bathing and dormancy, they were still demons. They weren't accustomed to long periods of peaceful tedium.

It made a perfect excuse. "That is a good place to take a break for today."

"The whole day? You've only been at it a few hours."

"And what I have in mind will take hours more." Pushing off from the table, he draped his cane over his shoulder and held out a hand to 9S, a leg curling back to drop him into an elegant bow. "Spar with me."

9S slid tentatively down from the table. "Like combat simulation? Are you bored or something?”

“ _I’m_  bored,” Griffon griped.

“So it is.” V shrugged like it couldn’t be helped. “Familiars fight. That’s the way things are.”

One corner of 9S’ mouth twisted, and he dropped his hands into his pockets. “You just enjoy fighting, don’t you?”

“Do you not enjoy scanning?”

“Well yes, but that’s different, I’m a scanner. It’s built into my model type.”

V’s eyes dropped in thought. He could easily have said it was similarly in his design to fight, but that was more applicable to Vergil. V enjoyed not having to fight. It might have been the first time he had a choice. Just like the cane that he didn’t truly need to walk, certain things he couldn’t help but cling to. Thirty years of habits were not easily broken

“I may be the kind of being who is fated to fight,” he said somberly. 

“Fine,” said 9S, though he didn’t sound particularly convinced. “But I’m picking where we go.”

* * *

 

Far beyond the eastern borders of the city limits, south of the forests but north of the coastline, V followed 9S into the wilds. The overgrown grasslands were pocked with the occasional decrepit structure, or a titanic, yawing tree that had clearly grown around a building that it had long since swallowed, leaving only a few scattered stones sprinkled in the bark like crumbs. Here too were white remnants of the tower fall. They were much sparser than the scorched craters with the remains of androids and machines and flight suits. It was a no man’s land, abandoned and gone to seed.

Travelling on his own feet would have been terrible. He had no idea how 9S was maintaining his run. The city was comfortable, bordering on cool, but the empty countryside was what V expected from a planet in eternal sunlight. The saving grace was in the merciful lack of the forest kingdom’s suffocating humidity. An occasional salty breeze shuffled inland through the crunchy grasses, keeping it that way.

9S slowed and came to a stop on a hill slightly flatter than those they had climbed thus far. He craned his head up to the sky. “I’ve ever been to this zone while I was on the ground.”

V stepped out of the puddle of shadow and similarly scanned the ground. Machine presence had been sparse on their way there, and now there were none to be seen. “Perhaps I could shelter here for the winter.”

“Maybe. I’ll scout around a bit sometime and see what I can find.” He swung his arms and dropped into a ready but not particularly enthusiastic stance. “I won’t use my sword so…whenever you’re ready.”

V stared down his nose. “Do I strike you as that frail?”

“No, but you’re still a human and I’m still an android. Do you even know how much I weigh compared to you?”

“I have killed things a dozen times bigger than you. I fail to see how your weight matters.”

“It matters because I’m two thirds your size but twice your weight. It would take a long time to dent a machine bare-fisted, but if I get a hit on you, I’ll break your bones.”

A worthy observation. Broken bones worried V less than finding out whether he did or did not have a healing factor on his side. It would be useful to know, but he doubted he’d be able to explain healing from broken ribs without medical attention by waving it away as witch magic.

“All the more reason for you to take this seriously,” he insisted. “Prepare me here and now or I may have to find out the hard way.”

“Yeah… that’s true. Let’s have three rounds then. I’ll teach you the basics.” He rolled his shoulders, properly holding up his fists and bracing defensively. “When you’re ready.”

He turned his cane in his hand. Griffon alighted on V’s arm, and the tattoos containing Shadow twitched and squirmed on his chest. Griffon took off with a raucous laugh and spat lightning. 9S waited. A bolt scorched the earth where he stood, but he darted to the side and disappeared.

Blurred afterimages flickered toward V, and he swung his cane in time to catch 9S’ bizarre approach. 9S ducked, splitting out of existence again, and this time V was pulled into the field of whatever system he was activating. Outside of it, Griffon slowed nearly to a stop. Lightning on his wings, often too quick for the naked eye, crawled and twisted.

_Witch time?_

9S closed in. Shadow slid under V’s feet and dragged him back, away from the attack. The field cleared, returning them to normal time. Lightning sprayed down in 9S’ path, and Griffon snatched V into the sky. Shadow leaped from the long grass beneath them and exploded into black spines.

9S back dashed out of skewering range but lost no time in sprinting forward and hopping light-footedly up the mound of spikes. He bounded after them, swinging himself deftly off Pod 053 for an aerial boost.  Despite making nowhere near enough vertical distance to hit them, he swung both his fists.

V glimpsed a shimmer in the air and heard a low rumble not unlike thunder. He managed to yank Griffon out of the way of one, but not the other, and was unceremoniously dropped for his efforts.

He landed in 9S’ waiting arms.

“That’s my win,” he said with a proud smile.

V wasn’t sure if the burning in his chest was embarrassment at losing or at 9S cradling him like he weighed nothing. He quickly got back on his own feet, ran his fingers through his hair, and tried to reclaim some shred of his dignity.

“Were you manipulating time?”

“I was just overclocking, but it didn’t even faze you so call it what you want.” 9S crossed his arms behind the back of his head. “How did you keep up with it so well? I was really impressed!”

“Minor time magic runs in the family,” V explained absently, rubbing his chin with the cane. “What about that wave attack? I’ve never seen you use that on the machines.”

“It’s from a shockwave chip. I usually don’t use it because it’s more valuable for me to employ hacking chips.” He tugged his collar down. The smooth skin at the very top of his chest receded, exposing a panel. With a click, it opened and revealed three dozen blinking nodes. “See? These are my plug-in chips.”

V’s eyes glazed over. “I…see. And these are YoRHa specific?”

“Nope, they’re standard across all androids. I might have more active ones than a normal model, though—I made sure to invest in some extra processing. Right now, I have twelve of them active.”

He pointed them out with an enthusiasm that reminded V of a child showing off interesting knick-knacks he’d collected. “This one’s is for overclocking in response to close-range combat, annnd this one is for ranged. That little one on the end there is for the shockwave. I have a bigger one that’s better optimized, but I swapped it for this one so it wouldn’t be as painful.”

Griffon fluttered down and perched on V’s shoulders. “Newsflash, boy-bot, everything feels like shit when it smacks you in the ass!”

“Sorry, but if I used a full power one it would feel like you got hit with my full strength.”

“His pride was more wounded than his body,” said V, scratching soothingly at his familiar's feathers. “Don’t mind him.” He peered closer at the neat rectangle, full of smaller boxes clearly meant to be removable pieces. Most were black, but there were a few in bright splashes of color. “One of these increases your speed, doesn’t it.”

9S beamed. “You noticed! On the way here I spent my time customizing the best load out for fighting you. You’re  _really_  slow without Griffon and Shadow. Upping my movement speed and my evasive range gave me big advantage over you.”

Griffon sniggered. “He’s sure got you all figured out, huh?”

“ _He who has suffered you to impose on him knows you."_

“Sure, Shakespeare, now say it again without looking like you stepped in shit. Hey kid, what’s the big silver one up top do?”

9S pulled back from the invasive beak poking over V’s shoulder, covering his exposed chips with unexpected protectiveness. “That’s my operating system. I’ll die if that’s removed.”

Griffon’s head bobbed curiously. “No kiddin’? What if you put it back in?”

“What if I put your dumb bird brain back in after I took it out of your head?”

“Least my brain’s actually in my head. Oh oh, does that mean you can swap heads onto different bodies since your brain is in your chest?!”

“No!” 9S rapidly tapped his paneling until it closed, and the synthetic skin smoothed back over it. “That’s not how it works! My head is where all my external interface systems and my memory data are!”

_And black boxes store your consciousness._

Assuming the black box wasn’t what pumped that imitation blood through him, 9S functionally had two sets of paired vital organs. One brain for memory, another for control; one heart for his body, and one to house his soul.

Griffon must have felt the subtle change in his mental state, because when V glanced up, three pupils were staring directly into his eyes.

He subtly shook his head and leaned on his cane. “Shall we move on?”

* * *

 

9S flung the massive rusty slab of a sword. Unlike his small sword, it arced in a perfect, deadly circle and sang a bone-crushing song as it moved through the air—too heavy to pit Shadow against. He closed the distance instead, ducking inside the arc instead of outside of it. In the corner of his eye, golden sparks. Around 9S’ fists, an obscuring flurry that materialized into black fists with wickedly curved tusks. If he didn’t know any better, he’d have said it was a Devil Arm. A rapid combination of punches sent shockwaves into the space between them. Griffon laid down a blinding blockade of lightning bolts, and V dodged left to follow their arc.

Golden sparks. V dropped flat and the shockwave rushed over him, snapping the longer grasses in half. Rushing footsteps closed in on him. 9S appeared above him, fists in hand.

V rolled, revealing Shadow just beneath him. Inky tendrils shimmering with red patterns lashed up from the void, dragging 9S down.

V observed his valiant effort to keep himself airborne and avoid landing in range of her more dangerous attacks.

This was _fun._

Was it Vergil’s echo within him? Or the same thin trickle of Sparda’s blood that spared him a human’s fate before this world’s gods?

9S swapped to the sword. At a snap from V, Shadow retreated as 9S swung it downward, splitting open the earth where she had been.  The sword re-materialized along his back, tilted almost diagonal to his body to keep it from dragging in the dirt.

Griffon circled around him. “A little big for you isn’t it, boy-bot? You overcompensating for something?”

9S tilted his head. “Something like what?”

“Ha! Nevermind, guess you’re not  _that_  lifelike.”

V shot Griffon a look that could have plucked his feathers clean. “Are we done so quickly?”

9S crossed his arms and held a hand thoughtfully under his chin. “Yeah. We could keep going, but I don’t think there’s much either of us could do to get a definitive result without the last bit.”

_There would be if you weren’t so carefully avoiding anything that could truly hurt me._

It would have made a hypocrite of him to say as much aloud, so he merely smiled. “Very well. I am your eager student.”

The rusty slab on 9S’ back vanished, replaced by the smaller golden blade he normally used.  “That was a good tactic hiding Shadow beneath you.”

“With you attacking my sluggish pace, it only makes sense to keep you off your feet.”

“Hmm…” 9S dropped down onto his calves and gestured for V to sit with him. “You said your father had enemies. Is that why you can fight like this?”

A wave of nostalgia came over V as tangibly as the breeze. For the first time, he struggled with an equivalent question. He couldn’t decide if it was extremely personal or not personal at all.

“What were you doing before I arrived?”

9S’ cheer evaporated. V waited for the question to be dropped so they could move on, but 9S slowly rubbed his palms over knees.

“I guess I was dying.”

V didn’t bat a lash. 

“When I went into the tower,” 9S went on, his voice quiet but stable. “The plan was to die destroying it. Instead I woke up on the ground. Mission accomplished. I went to the forest, but no matter how many machines I killed; it didn’t do anything for me. I was exhausted. So, I just left my weapons and found a place to lay down somewhere no one would bother me. I’d been lying on top of the rubble for weeks when I spotted you flying overhead.”

“And you thought I was a YoRHa unit,” V recalled. No wonder 9S looked so ragged and filthy; he had risen from his grave. He sighed softly. That meant it was his turn. “My family hunts demons. All of us can fight.”

9S’ gaze drifted up, toward Griffon. “But your familiars...”

“They’re special. Without me, they would fade away. And without them, I lack strength.” V ran his hands along his cane and gave a pinched smile. “I am… the weakest in the family. So it has been since my birth.”

What 9S thought of this, V couldn’t tell. He turned his attentions to opening his screen and enlarging it so they could both see it easily.

“Last lesson,” he began. “This one’s important. Resistance members mostly use sword weapons, but all of them carry guns, so I want you to get familiar with Pod’s shield functions. A060 is a near-field barrier, R070 is far-field. I’ve only ever voice-controlled pod programs outside of active combat situations, but you’ll have to since you don’t have an FFCS circuit.”

V blinked slowly at the display. His eyes had already wandered away to the list on the far left. “And all of these are also Pod’s programs?”

“Yeah. Pod 042 is set to this one.” His finger tapped a program designated R010. “It’s a basic laser program. Pretty utilitarian, mine is set to the same thing. I’m not going to use it on you, though. I’ll just be laying down basic suppressive fire.”

“And I can command Pod to use any of these programs?”

“Some of them have pretty hefty recharge times, and a few I think probably don’t apply to you, but yeah.”

V grinned and hooked Pod 042 in close with his cane. “Excuse us a moment. I’d like to prepare.”

* * *

 

Pod 153 was quite faithful to the limitations of a common gun. Every few seconds, she paused for approximately the time it might take an experienced soldier to reload. 9S was sitting comfortably beneath her, on the same semi-real chair he liked to sit on when he went fishing. All V had to do was get to him and subdue him.

Simple.

Pod 153’s fire lulled. V darted from the safety of the barrier.

“ _Sitzfleisch_.”

Pod 042’s chassis opened. 9S’ head jerked up and he abandoned his seat in time to avoid the gravity well that consumed the area. Pod 153 began firing again, independent of 9S’ attention. Griffon sailed overhead to return first. Like Pod 042, her protocols demanded that she take self-preserving measures. An easily abused system, but truthful at least. It was natural to focus on an active threat.

V advanced with Shadow lurking beneath his feet. 9S ran at him without waiting, golden sword in hand.

“Cross-check.”

9S was quick to catch on. His head flicked toward Pod 042, and he dodged back as the mirage program lashed out at him. The overclock field did him no favors at close range. Shadow formed fully beneath V’s feet, her head melting and morphing only to shoot out of the ground in a sharp spike that V danced forward on, violet magic coating his cane as he leaped at 9S.

They clashed, and V felt the ring of metal vibrate up through his wrists. 9S didn’t budge—not until he noticed the inky Shadow approaching his feet. He dashed backward, and V broke left.

“Capture and Blockade.”

A luminous black wire of the same achromatic magic as the other skills leashed 9S, yanking him back to V’s side. Though he managed to prepare his sword, it struck harmlessly at the shield, while V’s cane found it’s mark pressed firmly against 9S’ neck.

V smiled, only half out of breath as Shadow half-growled, half-purred against 9S’ back. “I believe that’s checkmate.”

9S nodded, disengaged Pod 153 and dropped his sword. The moment V let him go, he trotted over to where he’d left his pack and returned with a water. “That’s three rounds, so we’ll had back as soon as you want.”

V drank gratefully. The forest kingdom’s water tasted very different from the oasis water—worse, in his opinion, but it was worth it to keep 9S out of the desert. He felt pretty good actually, but he would be glad to get out of the baking heat and back to the more pleasant atmosphere of the city. “Your silence surprises me.”

“Really? I don’t think there’s anything to say.” Though he said as much, no sooner did he drum his fingers against his arm and think on it, he continued: “Did you make keywords for _all_ the pod programs?”

“Barring the one for repair, yes.”

“And you managed to familiarize yourself with what they did and use them tactically in less than an hour…”

“I made use of some of your quirks as well. Pods must protect themselves first if they are targeted, and though your telekinesis operates from both hands, you favor right-handed maneuvers.”

9S sat his chin on his fist and rocked his head ponderously back and forth. Yet V could feel him staring right through the blindfold.

“You have something to ask?” he offered with a smirk. “There are three questions left in our game.”

9S quickly shook his head and pretended to be very interested in the grass. “No, I was just thinking… Even if everyone in your family is stronger than you, I don’t think you’re weak. I think you’d make a really awesome scanner.”

Tightness settled in V’s chest, startling him nearly as much as 9S’ words. His fingers found their way to the tooth hanging from his neck—a gaudy thing that he held little love for and had still become rather attached to.

He had never worried at it before, but it was all he had against the unfamiliar warmth and slightly painful fluttering that gathered in his stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In true Sparda boy tradition, we bond by fighting. 
> 
> Even though I struggled in some places with this chapter I really like the mood of it. V is defrosting and 9S is so perky, and I got to poke fun at battle mechanics from both games~
> 
> Buckle in, the boys have an overworld event to attend next chapter.


	30. Shared Fates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 21: The first of the bodies are unearthed from the towerfall.

Dull light greeted them when the elevator opened, reflecting gray on the trickle of water that flowed through the clogged pipe. V had grown used to the flat, cloud-scattered daylight that dominated in between brief but oppressive hours of unchecked sunshine, but this was different. The air was different. Like all his memories of early November afternoons in some secret nook with books that all bore his name within; cool air and warm tea and windowpanes growing foggy where he was curled close, his ears filling with gentle pattering against panes and gables and the occasional cry of a lonely grackle among the naked trees.

“Just in time," said 9S. "It looks like it’s going to rain soon.”

The skies were a more sullen gray than usual, and the clouds hung low enough to obscure the peak of the highest skyscraper. It hadn’t rained since he arrived, but the earth was an hour at most from receiving what it was owed.

Fortuitous that he chosen today to be picky about his meal. If luck was still with him, the worst of it would be over before they needed to venture out for more.

V followed 9S down onto the tower fall and along the looming but stable path they always took. The frequent need to descend only to climb again was a bother, but the effort kept them out of sight. Another downside of his chosen roost, V thought. It sat right on the corner of the widest, least blocked road to the desert. Ever since 9S returned from his errand, he had noticed an increase in activity. It was only a matter of time until one of them looked up.

Ahead, 9S stuck out an arm to stop him climbing the next block.

“Androids.”

“How many?”

“Full crew. Stay low.”

Following no such rule for himself, 9S climbed higher and vanished. 

V leaned back against the nearest wall, crossed his arms, and waited. They had been down in the caves for two, maybe three hours. It was possible a crew had arrived in that time. Clearing a small area where they had once had an outpost was one thing—they couldn’t be planning to clear the entire crater out could they?

9S dropped down next to him, and right away V knew something was amiss. He was too quiet. Still in a way that had nothing to do with stealth.  

“Our path is blocked,” V guessed.

9S nodded and moved past him at a sleepwalk. “There’s a spot ahead I can keep watch from.”

V glanced up at the block they usually climbed. It wasn’t the highest peak, but it was an excellent vantage point. The location 9S proposed was a broken pillar only a little taller than V. Because the Resistance had been so busy clearing out the southern end of the crater, the debris had shifted to create a mild slope. Where 9S sat, he could see everything, and V could still see him. What 9S meant was ‘a spot where he could keep watch and still be within arm’s reach.’ 

It wasn’t like him to explain so half-heartedly.

V squinted down between the obscuring geometry. There were fifteen, maybe twenty androids milling around. Drilling equipment, two flatbed trucks precariously parked on the far slope, another idling in the small area they had managed to dig out at the bottom of the pit, and some kind of pulley they had attached to the dead goliath machine.

Nothing out of the ordinary so far as he could tell, but clearly there was more to it than what he could see. 9S was in a closed room of his own making, and V had little choice but to draw his cloak in close and settle down. The minutes stretched, and the silence with it, punctuated by the occasional distant roar of a drill or a muffled explosion that V initially mistook for thunder. He didn’t know how long it had been when 9S’ voice parted his half-doze.

“Ask me something.”  
  
He turned his head enough to make out the black shape of 9S’ back above him. “Like what?”

“Anything.”

“…Where were you made?”

“How old are you?”

Complicated, but luckily inconsequential. “Twenty-eight.”

“Hm. Younger than I thought.” V thought he detected disappointment, but couldn’t imagine why. “I don’t actually know where I was made. YoRHa manufacture happens in a fully automated facility.” A faint, bitter smile lifted his cheek. “Wouldn’t want anybody to know about the black box.”

His head drooped, down to where he was idly twiddling his fingers in his lap. “Ask me something else.”

“There are only two left.”

“I know.”

V curled tighter into his cloak against the permeating clamminess. He had gently steered them away from unpleasant topics before, but always after he had unwittingly set 9S off, and never at request. There was something souring about being asked. It was too much like providing the spade for 9S to bury his unpleasant thoughts with.

A strangled gasp spared him the need to decide if he would or wouldn’t be made an accomplice. The resistance androids were arranged in a twitching circle around something they had dug out.   
  
White dust snowed down. Above, under the pressure of 9S’ grip was pulverizing the edge of the pillar.

“What did they find?” asked V.

Through teeth clenched not with anger but some much more grim sentiment that V couldn’t place, 9S answered: “The twins.”

A rush of briny wind heralded the rain. It fell first in a whisper and then in a roaring sheet that blurred the world to nothing beyond a few yards. V could no longer see the androids, but he could make out their panicked voices bouncing between drops so overloaded they were more akin to wet hail than rain. Headlights pierced the gloom and revved engines filled the space left by absent thunder. They sped up the cliffs to the safety of the asphalt before the world could turn to mud.  
  
9S remained stone still even after they were gone, indifferent to the torrent drenching them both. V climbed up to his vantage point. The rain complicated things, but he thought he could make out two red bodies in the dirt.

“Twins…” V mused. He had heard of twin androids—in the reports. “Devola and Popola? They were still alive?”

“Different individuals of the same model. Left alive intentionally after a mass decommission of their type.” His wet gloves squeaked as his fingers clenched into tight fists. “Everywhere they went they were blamed for failing to restore mankind, even though it wasn’t them. Even here…”

V suspected there was more than simple sympathy involved. Over and over, the tower proved to be the root of something he still didn’t fully understand and probably never would.  
  
9S looked south; toward the empty road back to their camp. "We should go."  
  
Far below, the red spots were vanishing. Sinking, most likely.

Perhaps it was because they were twins, but V wanted to see their faces before the earth took them. He jumped without waiting for 9S. What little light there was grew even dimmer as he descended into the pit. He dropped into several inches of rainwater already filling the empty space between the cliff-face and the natural dam of the tower fall.

The twin androids could almost be mistaken for dolls. Though their bodies had been crushed in places, the lubricant that ran through them had already been washed away. Their death was neat. Bloodless. The cold had not affected their warm pallor, nor had their passing discolored them. They lay unmoving, their red hair slick and half-afloat, with mud sullying clothes that did not resemble the uniforms of the Resistance or YoRHa. 

Their intertwined hands drew him into a kneel, where he was assailed by the matching, wilted flowers in their hair and the differences in how they lay: the straighter haired flat on her back with her empty hand placed peaceably on her stomach, while the one whose hair curled even when soaked lay slightly on her side, arm—broken by the towerfall— reaching to cradle her sister.

Instinctively, he recognized which was the older, which was the younger, and which had died first. It punctured something deep inside of him, dizzying him with breath either lost or held too long as his mind tumbled with a thousand too close thoughts of too distant memories.

9S landed beside him with a heavy splash. The water was rising. “They helped me get into the Tower,” he said, a small spark in his voice despite the rain. “And it was all for nothing.”

“What reason did they have to give their lives to you?” V asked. “Did they know you?”

“No. They just wanted to help. When they were left alive…they were re-programmed to feel guilt. All the time. No matter what they did, it would never be enough to make it go away. Because they—because their model type was trusted with humanity and they failed.”

“The relapses were not within their control.”

9S shuddered and hugged himself tight. “…I know.”  
  
The way he said it made V look up. There was intimacy there. The same that had slipped out when V first said he didn’t want to talk about his mother. Of course there was. 9S didn’t have to work to sympathize with them. 9S  _was_  them. Complete with guilt over something he hadn’t done and had no choice in.  
  
The grooves of the cane bit into his palm as he rose. “It bothers you to see them like this.”

“Everybody dies, V.”

“That is not what I mean.” The waters were rising. The faces of the twins and the blossom of their red hair all that was visible, spreading like blood. “Abandoned by their own kind for a crime they didn’t commit. Deaths as lacking in dignity as their lives.”

9S lips pressed together, his brows shifting down beyond the rim of his blindfold. “Of course it bothers me. What are you even getting at?”

“I’m asking what you want to do about this.”

_"What?”_

9S’ fists were balling. His chest was starting to heave. V knew he was pushing too hard. He didn’t care.

Thirty years of resentment—of thinking ‘if only Dante had not existed’ _—_ while he had childishly avoided thinking of how things might have been  _with_  Dante. In his wildest imaginings, they could have protected Eva, and spared them both so much pain. In a realer world, they could have at least had one another as they grew up and grew strong enough to avenge her. Perhaps they could have… Maybe it would have been better to have suffered and survived and ultimately met destruction hand-in-hand with his twin was a thought too impossible and too unbearable.

“Does it sit easy on you to think of what may happen when the other androids return?”

9S hesitated. His voice came out small. Lost. “Emotions are prohibited.”

“Then your makers are senseless and cruel far beyond what I already believed them to be.”

As V saw his own failed past, 9S was certainly seeing his own. V would drown them both in that pit before he let 9S cocoon himself in the same frigidity Vergil had embraced. 

Their lips and the narrow points of the twin’s noses were all that remained above the water.

“What authority demands you leave them here?”

“It’s none of my business.”

“They gave their _lives_ for you,” V said harshly.

“And look at what good it did them!” 9S snapped. “Look at the good it did anybody! I should’ve been buried under all this shit with them!”

“Perhaps. But you weren’t.” Cold filth crept toward V’s knees. He sloshed closer to 9S and looked down at him from within his sopping hood.

“You do not have to accept this.”

Permission, it seemed, was honey that could draw 9S out of himself.  “What can I do?”

"If you desire better for them, act on it."

“I don't know  _how_ , V! I'm not asking your opinion; I'm asking for help! You're the human, so please—” He dropped into the water, yanking both twins up out of the mud. He might have been crying. Who could tell in a rain like this? “Please tell me what I'm supposed to do.”

Grief was complicated. And 9S clearly had no idea where to begin unraveling its intricacies.

“First, let’s get them out of here.”

* * *

 

Cold mud squelched between V’s feet and the soles of his sandals, leaving him more reliant on his cane for balance than he had been in a long while. The rain had let up from a drowning torrent to a sullen cascade, complete with the occasional distant rumble of thunder. 

“You’re sure you want to do this?” he asked.

9S cradled the straight-haired twin, Popola, in his arms and nodded solemnly. “I don’t want to bury them, especially on a day like this. And I don’t want anyone to bother them. This way…I know they’ll be left alone.” He frowned. “That must sound silly. It’s not like they know the difference.”

“The dead don’t feel grief,” V said calmly. “It’s not for them, and it isn’t rational.”

9S sighed. “Humans are strange…”

Shadow rumbled under the weight of the curly-haired twin. V patted her head, and they both followed 9S to the coast. From the edge of the ruined roads, the clouds and rain seemed to go on forever. 9S led them toward a long, broken bridge in the opposite direction of the missile. Lightning danced on the horizon, and V hoped it kept its distance.

As they walked between the rusted, twisting metal and stepped over support cables that had long since abandoned their post, 9S spoke. “Can I ask another question…?”

“Of course.”

"How much do you know about 2B?"  
  
V's eyes slid to the side. 9S’ tone was not accusatory, and his face was pointed forward, toward his destination. He wouldn't have anyway, but there was no reason to consider playing dumb.

"When did you figure it out?"  
  
9S turned, gently swinging Popola’s body with him, and nodded toward the coast. "When we came here together before, and you were waiting right there for me. I wasn't myself, but you were acting strangely too. If felt like you were apologizing to me, and then you brought up me maybe having bad memories because I was a soldier. It was suspicious."   
  
"I thought myself good at keeping secrets,” said V, with a small smile. “But you make a liar of me so easily."  
  
"I'm a scanner; I pick up on these things.” His mouth pinched, and he put visible effort into adding what little sweetness he could muster to a bitter laugh. “I always do."

V raised a brow but didn’t let his mind drift to far from the answer he owed.

“I know that she was your partner,” he began carefully. “I found her flight unit and listened to the first half of the message—the part she intended for a stranger’s ears. I don’t think I would have needed to hear it to know you had a partner. When you talk of the past, you say ‘ _we_ ’.”

“I could have meant Pod.”

“Pod's still with you, and you don’t say ‘we’ now.”

9S cracked a weak smile. “Yeah… I guess I don’t.”

“I know that she died,” V continued.  He turned his cane pensively in his hand. “While inquiring if Pod 042 was passed to you after her death, I found out how. That’s all.”

“I see.”

The broken edge of the road loomed, and 9S stopped short to lay down his cargo. “Here, Shadow. Thanks for your help.” He laid Devola beside her sister, using the dwindling rain to wipe away some of the more stubborn grime that had caked onto them. When he could think of nothing else to do for them, he replaced their hands as they had been, and squeezed them tightly together. 

"Is there something else I should do here?"

"Offerings were customary.” The rain was letting up. V lowered his hood and dragged his fingers through hair that had soaked through. “Flowers or something meaningful.”  

9S looked back down at the bodies. They were three or four kilometers out at sea, there were no flowers. Even the dandelions had not managed to find homes here. Instead, he untied his blindfold. After staring at it for several silent minutes, he gently bound their hands together with it.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “And I’m sorry.”

V followed along as 9S began dragging the bodies toward the precipice. He didn’t ask for help, so V didn’t offer. At the very edge, with a shout, he sent them toppling over into the dark sea. They sank with a meager splash, leaving behind a ring of blue-green foam that quickly vanished.

With the world so gray, 9S’ eyes seemed as blue as the hidden sky. He glanced aside, watching V’s face carefully.  "Is it wrong that I sort of envy them?"

"No." Even if it was, V did too. “The task is done. Let’s go home.”

* * *

 

Where the bridge connected back to the mainland in a crooked jumble of asphalt, 9S stopped. His brows were drawn together beneath his soggy hair, and he was pressing his knotted hands against his coat.

"Hey, V...?” He rubbed gently at his gloves, keeping his eyes down. “YoRHa is— **I** am just like those twins. I won't be loved by this world, whether I’m alive or dead. If you're with me, it might endanger you. You might be targeted."  
  
An easy smirk crossed V’s lips and he tilted his head. “And?"  
  
"Is it really alright for someone like me to stay with you…?"  
  
V paused, struck by hearing aloud a question that had only ever existed as a background doubt in Vergil's younger mind. At heart, Vergil was V—someone who wanted to be protected. Someone who wanted to be loved. It had taken him a long time and a lot of bodies to internalize pushing others away, and never once had he framed it so kindly.

Though he did hate seeing 9S pretend at coldness when he was so relentlessly kind, perhaps this had not entirely been for the android's sake. If V was honest, he simply couldn’t watch that familiar cycle of foolishness repeat itself right in front of him. 

"Do you think I would abandon any of my companions for such a dull reason as fear or pain?"  
  
"...No."  
  
"Good." He turned his back. "That's twenty."  
  
"What?” 9S danced around V, his face left unguarded by his confusion. “How’s that twenty?!"  
  
"The point of the game is that the questions are supposed to tell us something about each other. I learned something about you," V answered, showing a cryptic, toothy smirk. "Did my answer tell you nothing about me?"  
  
9S stared up at him, the gears turning and clearing the fog from his crowded mind. As V's words fully sank in, he began to fidget.   
  
"O-oh. ...I guess it did."  
  
Light came back to his dull eyes on the wings of a shy smile, and he scurried ahead on the empty road. The rain wasn’t over, but high above, a single ray of light broke through the clouds.


	31. Intermission

**~Intermission time~**

Hi guys~! I'm going to be taking a brief hiatus until August to work on other things. By which I mostly mean finishing up at least 2 of the plethora of doodles I've made of these two together, which I've added below for y'all to enjoy. 

  

 

 

 

 

  

 

(Fun fact, this exact doodle is the one that put the idea of this fic into my head, I was just minding my business enjoying DMCV before that.)

 

**~What to Expect Next~**

There's a total of 5 'acts' (arcs? whichever) to this story and we have just finished the first. Next act is going to chuck out angst in favor of mostly fluff of the lads getting closer over the winter while V keeps working on his doctorate in android history. The chapters will be short, the plot will not thicken much until the end, and overall this act will be short (meaning <50k words), but the time will move a lot faster. Act I was just a month, but unless the boys want to take one hell of a detour Act II will should finish up with them in February or March.

If you have questions about lore feel free to drop me a comment! I keep my sources pretty close at hand since making use of the obscurest parts of the Taro-verse kind of demands it.

Per some questions I've received before:

  * Yes the roller coaster ride will be in the next act. V cannot escape.
  * Yes, The Big Boy will be gracing us briefly with his presence. 
  * Yes, The Best Boy will be making a dynamic entry, as he is wont to do. 
  * Idk, The lunar tear field is the closest thing 9S has to a sacred place outside his own memory region, I haven't made up my mind on whether he will take V there this act or the next. They're comfortable but they haven't even started talking about how they both sort of got killed by the people they cared for yet, they still have some bonding to do. 



 

If ya'll wanna keep up with what I'm doing and see my collection of 9S/V galaxy brain posts, I'll still be marking out about the YoRHa 1.3a play and Visions of V and gushing about character psychology on twitter @FarLouRea

Disclaimer: I do talk about things that will happen in the future of this fic occasionally, but I explicitly keep it to the fluffy/jokey stuff. I only talk about plot points  _after_ I've posted the related chapter. 

 

Here's a preview for y'all to chew on while I'm out. Ciao!

* * *

 

 

V sagged backward, overjoyed just to be on solid ground even if that ground was a dozen stories in the air. He fought demons, he reminded himself; survived falls, leaped on faith into Griffon's clutches from perilous heights, seen people disemboweled and breathed the stench of the Qliphoth. Yet thirty seconds on a roller coaster was a greater nemesis, and a more sickening experience than any of these. 

How  _galling_. 

The fireworks stirred him out of his misery. Their visit last time had been short and tense, but he didn't recall so much noise or such extravagance. Looking down from their perch, the ruined amusement park was aglow in the area's strange twilight. Lights and lanterns of all colors lined the avenues. The few rides that weren't totally destroyed were actually moving. Even the fallen ferris wheel had a light in every carriage, waved by machines who were merrily throwing anything that could be thought of as festive, from confetti to flowers to glitter. He recalled the amusement park machines being fun and festive, but this put their previous displays to shame. 

They were celebrating something.

With the question of what on his tongue, he turned to 9S only to find him holding a bottle so distinctive that even though it could have technically been anything, he immediately recognized it for what it was.

"Of course," he said with husky laugh of amused resignation. "Androids can drink."


	32. Coat of Many Leathers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 40: 9S crafts V some very familiar looking winter clothes.

A breeze tickled at 9S’ face. His nerve sensors tingled with the chill that had become more and more common as the October days went by. The sunlight, bright as ever but only faintly warm, shed its immobile rays onto the bleached concrete where the fruit of his month-long labors lay stretched out for final inspection.

He had been telling himself for most of that time that this wasn’t a good idea. V might have no fear of being seen in the company of a YoRHa android, but that didn’t mean he should intentionally make himself look like one. Among the androids of the resistance, only Anthurium and Balm knew him as a friend of 9S and a non-threat.  A gaunt and uncanny stranger that passed for YoRHa couldn’t expect a warm welcome given the mass infection, the report, or the general wariness of outsiders who cropped up with no warning.

Unfortunately, the only other alternative was to pack V even deeper into Resistance clothes for the winter. While it would have been simpler, it would leave him too open to being casually approached.

So. YoRHa clothes it was.

Unparalleled a scanner as 9S was, sewing wasn’t a part of his skillset. The only way he had managed to cobble a coat together that was big enough for V to fit into was by using the jacket he’d arrive in as a base. And enlisting generous help from the only beings in the zone who regularly wore clothes and wouldn’t ask questions: The amusement park machines.

That part was going to remain a secret. He had a feeling V wouldn’t find it funny that clowns had made his clothes. And anyway, even machines with fingers were not especially delicate about using them so 9S did have to do a lot of the finer work. And the material gathering. The damaged coat he’d left with his spare parts, a few lengths of leather clumsily retrieved from beneath the heavy armor of dead combat units, two white boar hides, and a spare resistance shirt had gone into the effort.

The high collar and thoroughly lined hood 9S was especially proud of.

V’s cane clicked behind him, prompting him to quickly tamp down the prideful grin on his face and rise from his squat.

“You’re sure you want it like this?”

V circled around. “My alternatives are to live in the desert or succumb to the cold.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” 9S teased. “I mean the look of it.”

V hooked the hood onto the edge of his cane and pulled it up. He held it briefly against his chest, his eyes closing with the cozy warmth of the sun-soaked leather before he threw it on right over his shirt. The sleeves were short, as 9S suspected they would be. V was a lot taller than a standard YoRHa unit, and though he was bony, his chest and shoulders were still pretty broad.

If V minded the less than perfect fit, he kept it to himself and focused on doing the buttons. “It’s lighter than I expected.”

“Well, yeah. YoRHa androids run pretty hot. Our uniforms are fancy granted, but they’re made for ventilation rather than heat retention.” Now it was his turn to circle around. “I patched in a bunch of animal hide to compensate... Is it warm enough?”

“Time will tell.”  V flipped up the hood and carefully tucked his hair back out of his face. “Appropriate shoes and gloves before the snow falls would be wise.”

9S mumbled an acknowledgement, but he barely heard what was said. He was nagged by a sensation that he had met someone who looked like V before. Somewhere so far back in his memory that it might even have pre-dated the first time—the _real_ first time—he met 2B.

“You’re smiling.”

Jumpily, he touched his fingers to his lips. He turned away, less concerned about the smile than the rest of his face. It hadn’t been that long, but he missed the days when V couldn’t actually tell what 9S was focusing on. Now it seemed he was constantly caught in the act and V always turned his eyes away with that narcissistic smirk on his face. How was that supposed to be fair? Every time 9S caught _him_ looking, he maintained eye contact until 9S couldn’t stand it anymore and had to shift his attention to literally anything else.

What the hell had he been thinking throwing his visor into the ocean?

As much as he couldn’t have admitted it, it wasn’t the worst thing to ever happen. V’s cool gaze attentively reading his face had strange and exhilarating electricity to it. He couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and it barely mattered. Personality or programming, to have the attention of a human all to himself made him feel like he was freshly manufactured.

He’d told himself it wouldn’t last forever and darkly reminded himself he didn’t actually want it to last forever but such mental affirmations no longer had any effect.

“You look good is all.” He straightened his clothes busily even though they were going to wrinkle all the exact same places they always did. “I did say you’d make a really cool scanner. Maybe we should make up a designation for you.”

V raised a brow at him and lowered the hood. The light at his back threw his face into shadow, but 9S could make out a raised brow. “A designation?”

“Yeah.” He backed away, framing V between his fingers. “A model number and type, in case you run into someone.”

“Is V not sufficient?”

“Sure until somebody asks what the V stands for.”

V twirled his cane with absent ease. It reminded 9S a little of the tricks B units sometimes did with their swords. They were always competing to see who could do the coolest, most dexterity-demanding move.

2B, of course, had never been interested.

“Vanguard,” he finally offered.

The completely serious expression on V’s face got to 9S more than the suggestion, and he dissolved into helpless laughter. “I didn’t think you were the kind who was bad at naming things! That doesn’t suit you at all!”

V’s brow lowered, his mouth twitching down. “And what would you suggest?”

“I dunno.” He pressed his fist to his lips to help keep his giggles from seeping out—at least while V was glaring like that. “Variable?”

“Ambiguous for a name that is supposed to define my purpose.”

“I guess, but isn’t a vanguard just a frontline unit? That would be covered by B and D units.”

The shiny brown-gold corona around V’s hair shifted as he combed his hair back into place with his fingers and sighed. “I don’t plan on giving my name to anyone. If you must, let me remain an unknown prototype, designated only as V. It is fine to simply say you do not know what it stands for.”

9S’ eyes locked up into a skeptical squint. He was a scanner; he wasn’t just going to go around saying he didn’t know things.

He’d think of something.

 

* * *

 

**Noted from Project Gestalt Reports:**

  * **2016: The Hamelin Organization is formed in response to discovery of the drug Luciferase—an anti-White Chlorination treatment. This organization would later expand to include the World Purification Organization, which spearheaded Project Gestalt.**
  * **2018: Luciferase is discovered to be most effective on children. Young adults are scouted for military recruitment.**
  * **Luciferase was later found to only slow the onset of the syndrome, and those treated often went berserk and turned on their allies.**



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, it's been awhile~ You may have noticed I've changed some things around: Cleaned up the tags, shortened the title, made this the first fic in a series. 
> 
> This next part of the story is going to be everything I said in the intermission, but while I was on my hiatus I did a lot of outlining and got a really solid feeling for just how long this is all going to be. I'm (very conservatively) looking down the barrel of this being maybe 300k words. So I restructured a bit to give each piece of the story its own breathing room.


	33. The Shape of a Treasure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 49: A peculiar machine appears and 9S finally gets to see V call on Nightmare.

With the advent of November, the honey-thick humidity of the forest finally receded and all that remained was the dry, gritty warmth from the western desert. The canopy had thinned somewhat, their sheddings giving a pleasant crunch to 9S’ steps. A few white blocks had managed to crash through the lightened boughs, and lay half-hidden in bushes and broken branches that had fallen with them.

From just ahead of him, V spoke. “Something of interest?”

“I wish.” He dropped his hand from where it shielded his eyes and hopped to catch up. “I read a lot about trees changing color in autumn, but I guess these megaflora don’t do that.”

“A shame. It does make quite the display.”

“Almost all of the old human records compare it to fire. Until I saw a picture I thought maybe they actually…”

He stopped as he realized what a naïve thing he was about to admit, but V was already chuckling. None of his usual smugness came through; he seemed surprised.

9S awkward half-laughed along and bounced ahead down one of the steeper hills. Humans were always likening things to other things. Androids had that ability too, of course; a lack of imagination was antithetical to predictive ability. But the differences in perception and processing occasionally made human metaphors more of a puzzle than 9S expected. There didn’t seem to be any solid parameters to what could and couldn’t be compared. They saw fire in autumn leaves and sunsets, which did seem pretty accurate if the pictures were to be believed, but they also saw it in things like red hair and rubies.

They did say humanity had an extraordinary capacity for pattern recognition, but the more 9S read, the more he thought that particular sense might have been a little overactive.

A mechanical thump and hiss brought him skidding to a stop. Heavy but hollow chains rattled against stone, and he immediately ducked to one side and frantically flapped his arm to signal V to get out of sight.

Down below, where the slope leveled out into a bed of brown leaves clogging a trickling stream, a rare machine type stomped through the clearing. It was one of the few that weren’t based on stubby-type units. This was a monster in the shape of a bipedal lizard with shards of twisted metal plating protruding from its back and a prehensile tail built from a massive length of roller chain.

“Shit… I was really hoping they stopped production on these.”

From behind him, V’s voice came out slow and incredulous. “The machines building  _dinosaurs_ is a regular occurrence?”

“More like a rare one.” He dropped lower into a squat as it turned in their direction. It raised its nose as if sniffing the air and moved on. 9S let out a tightly controlled breath. “But yeah, they do diversify their combat designs on occasion. I fought at least one machine that looked like a moose.”

He shuddered. Large herbivores were the only thing in the world he still feared, and machine animals that much more so. They couldn’t be plied with bait or whatever pheromone cocktail was in the sachets.

No answer came from behind him. Not even the low hum V let out when he was processing an idea. 9S glanced back, only to find V’s eyes dark and glittering. He couldn’t really be thinking—No, 9S already knew that was  _exactly_  what he was thinking.

 “V,  **no**.”

“Tell me,” V purred, stepping away from the cliff and out into the open.  “Will it go away on its own?”

“To another part of the forest, at least.”

“I’ve no interest in looking over my shoulder for its inevitable return.” The cane twisted and flickered as V’s grip changed, and he leered in a way that sent an uncomfortable tingle down 9S’ back. “Are you not up to the challenge?”

Something about V’s eagerness unsettled 9S. Something had _always_ unsettled him about it. It bordered on something so familiar, but so unintelligible; something that might finally shed light on why android battle fever mimicked love of all things if only he thought about it in just the right way.

Maybe. He wasn’t sure. On the sliding scale from 6O to Jackass, V was in his own special category as probably the least love-y person 9S had ever met.

His reservations and the nagging sense of being on the cusp of understanding something important aside, 9S had not forgotten about the third familiar. Encountering this rare type restored flicker of hope that he might finally get to see Nightmare, but he was careful to not get ahead of himself. Special machines were not simple enemies to defeat even with hacking. Their defensive systems were multi-layered and often just as aggressive as their physical attack patterns. 9S had managed to kill one alone, but he had been fueled by other things at the time.

E-drugs, for example.

Pretty suicidal choice given he wasn’t a combat type and had to give himself a massive dose to get anything to happen, but it had made sense given the kind of mindset he’d been operating under at the time.

“Alright,” he yielded. “But listen; there’s some things to watch out for: It will try to kick you or hit you with the tail if you’re directly in front of it. And it’s  _fast_  about it. Also, if it starts breathing smoke, get out of the way. Fire and a high-powered laser come from the mouth. I think the highest powered one I’ve ever seen on a ground unit.”

“On top of having guns.”

“Yes, on top of having guns.”

V smiled. Atop his raised arm, Griffon materialized with a low cackle.  “What are we waiting for?”

The moment they entered the stream where it was idling, three linked-sphere types erupted up out of the ground. He glanced at V, but his eyes were focused front and the tattoos were already twisting off of his skin in syrupy strands. There was no evidence of hesitation.

It took .07 seconds for 9S to check that he was using the right chips, 0.5 to prioritize the linked-types according to which would create the most chaos on the field, and another 2.4 to hack the gunner type. It exploded in a spray of combusting oils, knocking the other two off course.

The dinosaur machine was unaffected. Shadow was keeping it occupied while Griffon rained lightning ineffectually along its back.

“Maybe we should back off?!” 9S shouted.

“How about you _fuck_ off?!” Griffon crowed, darting out of the way of a tail swipe. “And fuck you too, asshole!”

From somewhere he couldn’t triangulate, V called out. “A140 at my signal.”

9S grumbled a sigh. The drill types converged on him, the half-rusted grind of their spinning bodies boring into 9S’ aural systems. He shifted sideways, kicking into overclock and sparing a hasty glance around. V wasn’t on the field. And overclock didn’t last forever. He darted beneath the near-stopped serpentine bodies to find their cores. The first drill unit took him several frustrating attempts to hack into owing to its moving core. The second, damaged by the eventual detonation of its partner, took half the time and exploded so close to 9S that hot oil splattered across his cheek.

He ignored the sizzling. There would be time for staunching gel later. “Where’s V?!”

“POD 042 IS WITHIN COMBAT ZONE.”

He gritted his teeth. V didn’t have any signals that could be tracked, and it wasn’t a good time to check the map for Pod 042.

To his left, Griffon and Shadow cleared away from a cloud of dark smoke that began to billow from the monster-type’s mouth. Flame belched forth, solidifying into a thick beam of plasma that whitened the cliff sides with its light and vented into the sky from between the machine’s back plating.

9S scrambled out of the way as it swung the beam into the surrounding crags, gouging wood and stone alike and scattering clouds of dust and splinters into the air.

_Phweeeeeee—t!!_

9S’ head jerked up. Through the debris, he saw the V’s thin silhouette perched above at the height of the cliff. Shadow lurked at his feet and Griffon perched aboard his shoulder. His cane was tucked away under one arm. Below him, the dinosaur machine roared up in red-eyed fury.

V answered with a contemptuous laugh. “Dying to play, aren’t we?”

Its eyes flashed and it crouched.

9S realized the whistle was his signal and jumped to execute the command. Pod 153 launched the Gravity program as quickly as she was able, catching the machine before it could complete its leap.

Above, V raised his arm and snapped.

A strange sensation of density filled the clearing, as though the air had grown twice as heavy as the moment before. White blocks shook free from the canopy, joined by an amorphous black shape that fell like a comet. It struck the dinosaur machine where it struggled against the gravity well, crashing both of them into the ground and kicking up a strong blast of dust.

The thing that unfurled itself from the crater was difficult for 9S to make sense of. A creature seemingly made of half-solidified tar, liquid enough to leave viscous strands of black ooze on everything it touched, but hard enough to have a defined, barrel-chested shape and swinging club-like limbs tipped in something that wasn’t even pretending to be hands. It put 9S in mind of the mouth of some horrific, sucking sea creature. From within its chest, a single, lidless violet eye the same color as V’s magic stared out unblinking and expressionless.

Nightmare.

It grabbed the peculiar machine, half-crushing, half-drowning it in its oozing, semi-solid form as it pulled the strong jaw open. Particles gathered before its eye, its own field-whitening laser firing down into the creature’s chassis. Again its plates filled with overflowing light, but this time it thrashed wildly, then feebly, before its eyes sparked and went out.

All that was left was a hunk of red hot, melted metal with a limp chain tail attached.

9S was pressed as deeply into the contours of the cliff as he could possibly be without burrowing into it. The base imperative on which all other things in his programming stood screamed at him.

This thing was dangerous. _V was in control of it._  He had to protect V. _Against what? V could destroy anything he wanted with a familiar like that!_ There had to be a reason he didn’t use it, it was dangerous.  _Yeah, dangerous enough that he didn't NEED to use it!_  Dangerous dangerous dangerous danger--!

With a grunt, he scrambled up the cliff, shielding his eyes and coughing as he inhaled the dust.

 “V?! Are you--!”

The question stopped existing before he finished it. Everything did. Even motion and sound peeled back from his battle-heightened senses, until the only thing that was real in his entire world was the halo of short, white hair shining through the falling dust that fell as gently as mist. The single visible eye that might or might not have been blue. The glinting cane reflecting light in perfect silver, warping into the gentle curve of a katana. The tails of the jacket that billowed in the outline of a familiar skirt.

In that perfect stillness so filled with light, her telling, too-gentle smile did not feel like an illusion.

 “ _2B…?”_

His whisper was insubstantial as the steam rising from his body, but even that feather-light disturbance was enough to break the spell. All too quickly, he was alone again atop a broken cliff in a broken world that no longer contained her.

But it did contain V.

Every splash of ink on his body had vanished, leaving only the faintest white trace of their unfilled space behind. The remaining ink of his third familiar had extended much further than 9S thought. His hair was nearly aglow in the sunlight, bright and swaying like a lunar tear in the breeze.

Below, Nightmare rumbled faintly, and dissipated into inky tendrils that seeped along the ground like roots. They crept up V’s cane, vanished under his sleeves, and seeped up from his collar. Beneath hair that settled black, his eyes twinkled with the presence of a grin that he humbly kept from his lips.

For 9S, all of this happened in a sort of dreamy slow-motion, as though his overclock was still running. Behind his eyes, the infinite yet painfully brief moment replayed. It was just a mistake in his recognition. V had asked to look like a YoRHa unit, and he did, and the white hair just caught 9S off guard is all.

Just a trick of the light.

He stared blankly into V’s eyes—green, he realized, not blue; like Anemone and the Commander and the faded pine needles that scattered the courtyard of the castle. 

He didn’t resemble her at all. Not in the slightest. But there was something so comfortable and familiar about certain parts of him. It was in the way he didn’t lend his mind to irrelevant details, in his occasionally frustrating detachment, the way he focused in on the quickest means of accomplishing his goals.

Out of 9S’ mouth, a whoop: “That was incredible!”

From his mind, a different thought entirely: Maybe V was what 2B would have been like if she had been a true B model.

It was alright to enjoy the illusion just a little, wasn’t it?

* * *

  _Noted from Project Gestalt Reports:_

  * _2018 - The National Weapons Laboratory was created in response to Japanese distrust of the Hamelin Organization. The lab’s existence was considered top secret, codenamed ‘Murasaki’. Their goal was to create weapons through human experimentation with maso, in order to remove the need for foreign aid in the war against Legion._
  * _Due to an incident in 2026, the experiments were deemed too dangerous to continue with, and the organization was rendered defunct._
  * _Related Files listed under: Project Snow White_



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Shin Godzilla reference for A Godzilla 2014 reference is equivalent exchange.


	34. Cold Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 60: A second rain falls, and a cup of tea is shared.

Rain fell over the city ruins, not yet snow but cold enough to make needles of every drop. Damp strands of hair clumped together over V’s clammy skin, and his breath rose in clouds of mist as he blew heat onto his reddened fingertips. The pelt-lined coat was keeping the rest of him as warm as he’d hoped.

At least it wasn’t a torrent this time. Had they been caught in a heavier rain, no amount of clothing would have kept him warm, and he didn’t relish the concept of sitting around in just a cloak waiting for a chimera of leather and fur to dry.

Pod 042 remained quiet. While readings from the archive would have passed the time, they had taken shelter in an unfamiliar part of the city. Silence was best, and V was content to sit on the sill of an empty window and gaze at the grayed-out ruins. Though his first rainfall there had been tumultuous, he enjoyed the ruins most when it rained. The sense of controlled isolation in a place where he was never truly alone was a bittersweet echo to happier times, but never unwelcome. The simple square windows were so like a quiet reading nook, where at any time he could reach out to Griffon or Shadow.

Or to 9S, who was staring up at the rain out of a neighboring window.

It was rare for him to get such a long look at the android’s resting expression. A great deal of their interactions were now a loop of him glancing at V, realizing V could see him or was already looking at him, and becoming self-conscious. V found 9S on his mind often and had no intention of looking any less, so 9S would have to live with the consequences of dropping his blindfold down into the sea with the twins.

For once, the android’s attention was elsewhere—somewhere distant enough that he didn’t notice V’s gaze on him. He looked older in that muted gloom; grown into someone unfamiliar. They were equally quiet, but the qualities of their silence were so different that even with the visual similarities, V couldn’t say that he resembled Nero, or even Vergil. 

From out of his more recent memories, V recalled lurking in the dark outside of a building without electricity, and seeing Dante sitting alone among so much piled up trash. He had been wearing a similar expression to 9S as he sat there in the dark. At the time, other things had been on V’s mind, and resentment clouded his vision. Even knowing better as he did now didn’t quite quell those feelings. But now, seeing that same lightless expression on the face of the boy in front of him, he understood that look was not mere boredom.

9S wore solitude like a mourning veil. So too had Dante.

Sleepiness tugged at V, and he allowed it to guide him away from the disconcerting thought of his rowdy, obnoxious brother grieving him. He always found himself sleepy when he got a reprieve from the constant sunlight, and the cold had only made the waves of sudden lethargy more potent. Perhaps it wasn’t too optimistic to think he might finally get some good sleep during the coming winter.

This wasn’t the time or place though, so he stretched to rouse himself.

The movement caught 9S’ attention. “Gloomy out, huh?”

“It’s only rain,” V said drowsily. “Does it look gloomy to you?”

“Yeah.” He poked limply at a stray insect scuttling for shelter. “I’d rather it just snow.”

V hummed and rested his chin against one hand. The sentiment wasn’t lost on him, but they hadn’t figured out exactly where to move to and the frigid rain served as a reminder they were running low on time to reach a satisfying conclusion. The entrance to the factory was blocked by tower debris, the desert would wear 9S down, the shore was unstable, inhospitable and too often frequented by resistance members, and neither of them wished to tempt fate by holing up in the forest kingdom until the spring thaw.

The amusement park had not yet been discussed, but V was already preparing himself for the reality that it was the best choice. Peaceful machines, lodgings that were at least partly furnished, even intact windows—but the  _noise_ …

It would be a long winter before he had another quiet moment like this.

“Tea,” he whispered.

“What about it?”

“I said I would show you how to make it properly.” He looked dreamily at the few ferns swaying below. “Though I don’t suppose there are any dandelions left.”

“I’ll find them.”

There was something dull and grim in his voice that drew V’s attention, but 9S’ eyes were obscured beneath his hair.

* * *

9S had never liked rain.

Sand was a physical nemesis that he had been more than willing to complain about to 2B. Rain he could never find the same energy for. Sand could be avoided. Given enough time, he could get rid of the endless annoying grains that got into everything if he had to deal with it. Rain wasn’t avoidable that way. Even if he stayed out of it and stayed dry, it still altered the environment for hours, sometimes days after it had come and gone.

He stayed closer to her when it rained. He talked more. He needed to hear her voice. Anyone’s voice. The pattering would have driven him crazy if he didn’t. 2B had always answered in her terse way, but always with a hint of puzzlement. She knew he was acting strange. Once, she had asked if he was alright. He’d brushed it off like he always did, and maybe because it wasn’t related to their mission or hers, or because that’s just how she was, she never pressed the subject. How could he have told her that he felt like calling her name just to know someone could hear him?

He couldn’t say he had such an irrational feeling. Not to her. ‘ _Emotions are prohibited’_ would have been her answer and imagining her rigid inflection over the sound of the rain made his chest tighten painfully. 

Heat tickled his nose and snapped him out of his thoughts. A mellow, floral scent drifted on warm tendrils of steam from a full bowl held in V’s hands face. Beside them, the cauldron had been pulled from the low fire. A bouquet of dandelion heads floated just below the surface.

Tea. Right.

 “No, I’m—I don’t need it, remember? You have to take in as much energy as you can for winter. You drink it.”

“You’ve mistaken me for a bear,” said V, with a slight tilt of his lips. “Take it.”

9S accepted with a sigh and wary scrunch of his lips. There wasn’t really any purpose to ingesting the liquid, but it smelled nice, and V seemed keen to have him try it. The color was pretty, light and golden like fresh tree sap. The flavor still wasn’t anything special, but it was pretty good compared to the bitter soup he had made. Just as light and floral as the dandelions, with a faint sweetness and an even fainter trace of chlorophyll that V probably couldn’t taste.

It was the warmth that took him by surprise.

Cold was only a nuisance for 9S. It rarely ever presented the kind of danger to him that overheating did, but that didn’t mean his surface temperature wasn’t lower than usual. The heat blossomed in his mouth, spreading pleasantly through his jaw and up into his cheeks. The more he drank, the deeper the sensation went, diffusing into tense places and gently unwinding them. The heat from the cup seeped through his gloves, spreading a similar sensation through his fingers.

_Like a hot bath you can drink._  

It was the first thing he could draw any kind of comparison to but he couldn’t possibly have described it like that aloud.

V was examining him from over the rim of his own bowl. Though his lips were hidden, his eyes glittered with a subtle smile. His cheeks and nose were flushing as he experienced the same sensations 9S had.

A second, much deeper bloom spread within him.

He didn’t think it was possible to experience an entirely novel emotion, but there it was welling up inside of him. New and blissful and free of any context that could dull or dilute it. It danced beyond the grasp of his understanding, like a comet that never landed where he thought it would. Yet he chased it frantically. If he spared even a single second it might fall somewhere he couldn’t follow and be lost to him.

All he wanted was a name. Magic words he could speak or think to neatly explain this sensation. If it was happening to him, it must have had human equivalent, but it was almost too much for him to process, much less articulate.

Something amazing was happening, and it was all 9S could do to chase after the unnamed star falling through him for as long as he and V had tea to share.

* * *

 

_Noted from Project Snow White: Underground Research Reports:_

  * _2025 – Research into Number 6 … will likely mark a great leap forward in Gestalt research … Budgets for all other projects are to be frozen immediately._
  * _2026 – Following the incident with Number 6 … this room will hold records on the methods used to control and/or cancels all forms of magic, including petrification and bestial transformation … Specifically, this should make it easier to complete a long-term storage solution for Number 6, as well as proceed with our Work on Number 7._
  * _2026 Agenda item – Disguising the laboratory’s above-ground facility as a mansion._



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I mentioned I'm very soft for food-related bonding today?
> 
> English is pretty lacking when it comes to terms for complex but specific feelings. So, to describe ‘the feeling of sharing of food in warm company’ that 9S has just experienced for the very first time, we’ll borrow ‘Hygge’.


	35. The Devil's Trill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 64: V remembers a song from his childhood and 9S learns to play the violin.

_But still the fragile seeds wait long for the sun to shine… Dark winter away…_

“ALERT: HUMMING WILL REDUCE SUBJECT V’S ABILITY TO HEAR REPORTS.”

V raised blank eyes to Pod 042. “Humming...?”

“AFFIRMATIVE.”

His eyes dropped to the thick gloves that covered his forearms and the slightly too heavy to be comfortable boots that enclosed his feet. Another reward for some minor job done for Anemone. Unless the cold proved bitterer than either of them could predict, he would remain in that cocoon of leather and fur until the thaw. Between such careful bundling and the thickly clouded sky, perhaps that was why that lullaby suddenly…

A tingle on his neck prompted him to look over his shoulder. Across the room, thoroughly distracted from whatever fable he was reading through today, 9S eyes were wide and rapt.

Just how long had the pod let him go on?

Griffon’s voice slithered through his mind.  _Time flies when you’re thinkin’ bout your mo~mmy._

“That was new,” said 9S, closing his display. “Do you like music, V?”

His lips twitched into a frown as he reflexively drummed his fingers along the cane. The thick gloves made the action unwieldy and clumsy. Having his sense of touch muffled was going to annoy him all winter. “ _In Eternity, the Four Arts: Poetry, Painting, Music, and Architecture_. I enjoy all if they are masterful, though none as much as mastery of words.”

“…So yes, but not as much as you like poetry, got it.”

“PROPOSAL:” said Pod 153. “UNIT 9S SHOULD AVOID REQUESTING THE LOCAL JUKEBOX FROM ANEMONE.”

9S scowled and swatted in her general direction. “I’m not crazy, Pod! He doesn’t need that!”

“Indeed I don’t.” V smirked and pulled his gloves off. “If I want music, I am more than capable of making it myself.”

He closed his eyes and tilted his head into the familiar position, his fingers holding the illusory instrument. In his other hand, he held his cane, ever so faintly aglow with a sheen of magic.

Familiar, crystalline notes answered his motions. He had only meant to play a few to make his point, but he launched into the first piece that came to mind. The graceful adagio ceased, replaced by an edgy, jumping allegro, like the flitting dance of a dragonfly on the hunt.

To start with such a difficult and aggressive final movement was unlike him—impatient to the point of inelegance. But as Griffon and Shadow could be particularly ruthless when they went too long without a challenge, so too did V find his fingers eager as fangs sinking greedily into the part of the sonata that would satisfy him most. Each touch strained with deliberate purpose against taut strings whose familiar, perfect tensions were sharp in his mind. Memory and magic intertwined in fearful symmetry and gave birth to cresting notes that blew along the concrete like lost breath. The feverish crescendo swelled, yielded, and swelled again, and when it finally abated into silence, the air was left trembling in its wake.

Or, given the slight shake of his hands and the flushed heat radiating up from his collar, it may have been his own exhilaration. The naked, slack-jawed awe on 9S’ was better than applause.

He was leaning forward so far he was practically on his toes and as soon as he realized V was done, he broke forward, dancing up to him and bobbing around to try and find the source of the sound. “How’d you do that?!”

“Magic,” V answered plainly.

9S’ nose scrunched and he opened his mouth to protest, but he just as quickly clamped it and paced away. “Magic, of course. I just need a compatible interface…!” He whipped back around. “What instrument was that?”

“Violin.”

“Violin, violin…” He laid down in the way he typically did when he had some minor maintenance task to run, or was otherwise tinkering around in his internal systems.

V watched with a bemused smile and raised brow, and tilted his head conspiratorially to Pod 042. “What is he doing?”

“HYPOTHESIS: YORHA UNIT 9S WILL REPLICATE A VIOLIN BY EMPLOYING A RUDIMENTARY REPLICATION PROGRAM. EXAMPLE: FISHING STOOL.”

“Curious...” He brushed his hair up and out of his face to allow the winter air to cool him back down. “Let’s leave him to it then. I believe we were on Project Snow White?”

“NEGATIVE. UNIT 9S WILL COMPLETE TASK IN LESS THAN—“

“I got it!”

9S bolted upright and scrambled to his feet. In his hands, a faint static-ridden afterimage of a violin and an accompanying bow took shape. He tilted his head in a surprisingly accurate mimicry of the correct posture, and began to play.

The screech was instant and expected, but it still got an unbidden wince out of V.

9S huffed and tried again more gently. Too gently. The strings whispered, but produced only a faint hum that persisted until he discovered the correct amount of pressure to apply.  Half a second of a single pure note rewarded them both, and he beamed.

“It works!”

It was the smallest victory possible, but it proved that 9S had, in essence, created a fully functional violin in less than two minutes, and V did not intend for a moment to cut down the glow of his accomplishment.

“Was your purpose to only prove that you could create such a thing?”

“Of course not,” 9S scoffed. “I want to play what you just did.”

“An audacious desire.” Nevertheless, he was intrigued. He left his cane by the wall and strolled around the android. “Allow me to help you on that path.”

With quick and efficient touches, V adjusted 9S’ posture, straightening his back and reaching behind his ears to tilt his head just so. He was faintly aware that 9S had stopped breathing, but he didn’t give it too much thought. Alarming as it was to discover, he didn’t actually need air to live.

He reached for the violin, but his fingers went right through it.

“Sorry,” 9S peeped. “It’s an android-only interface.”

V hummed. If 9S was the only one who could move it, he would simply have to move 9S. He pressed his fingers through the gaps in 9S’ gloves. Mere inches beneath his chin, 9S’ shoulders drew up, shifting the instrument out of the right position. V tried to press him back into the place, but the android's body had coiled too tight for him to move. 

He tilted his head down. “Uncomfortable?” 9S shook his head rapidly enough to send hair flying into his eyes. V noted that no other part of his body budged even an inch out of position. “You make a terrible liar when you’re tense.”

“It’s fine!” 9S insisted, just a little too loud for it to be true. “I’m just not sure what you’re doing.”

“It’s called…” His voice drifted away as he managed to get 9S’ shoulders relaxed and set his attention back on his hands. “Tuning.”

He guided 9S’ movements and the position of his fingers, and a slow, gently warbling note answered. There would be no hope of taking 9S through anything too fast or too aggressive, so he allowed the long notes to melt one into the other with only the occasional hitching squeak, which could be expected given the vicarious play.

Basic scales kept them both occupied while V focused on a new problem. Being such a straightforward kind, he would undoubtedly pour the entirety of his being into the mastery of whatever song V guided him to. Winter was long enough; it would be unbearable if he chose any of the usual suspects. Staples of a beginner though they were, Ode to Joy had outstayed its welcome with him before he was seven, and he could perish of old age contented to never hear Twinkle Twinkle Little Star _ever_ again.

An android could surely be trusted with something a little more complex.

He slowed both their hands to a stop before adjusting them to begin in the correct key, and guiding them through a series of serene notes. When a loop completed, he took them back to the start of it. The longer he listened, the more certain he was that he would not tire of them.

Beneath his hands, he soon felt 9S moving in tandem, and then slightly ahead of him, rushing to prove he already knew the motions.

V let go.

Deprived of the assist, 9S faltered, but with minimal self-consciousness, he was able to repeat the notes fully on his own. It didn’t sound quite right to V, but it hadn’t in his hands either. It had been a long time since he played that song.

 _No,_  he thought.  _It has been a long time since **Vergil**  played that song_.

In a way, V’s hands were just as new to the touch of a violin as those of the boy before him. As much insight as memory granted him, and as much mastery when he relied on magic to fill the gap, his fingers had never graced the strings of a real violin. They were not the same shape as Vergil’s. Not the same size. What little callousness there was to V’s fingers came from the cane rather than the Yamato. Even his ears, with their non-identical curvatures, did not perceive key or tune in quite the same way.

Between Vergil’s memory and V’s own experience was a chasm that could not be crossed. What harmony of being they might have had was lost the moment when V decided that dying according to the former’s wish was not to his taste.

“You are doing well.”

Pride radiated from 9S’ eyes, wide and bright beneath his disheveled hair. It must have been infectious, because V thought he felt a little of it as well. 

* * *

 

_Addendum from Project Snow White: Underground Research Reports, Noted by YoRHa Unit 9S:_

  * _**10.2025 – ‘The donor body Emil will be kept in storage as a fail-safe.’**_



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In-game V plays a bit by Paganini AKA ‘The Devil’s Violinist’ when he taunts. To match the joke, I tried to describe him playing the 4th movement of ‘The Devil’s Trill’ by Tartini. As for the song he opted to start 9S on: It's the opening of Canon in D by Pachelbel. They're all great, highly recommend if you like classical music even in passing.
> 
> Also just so we're all on the same page, there are about 6-7 more of the fluffy/angsty bonding chapters before the plot comes in to dunk on everyone's good time.


	36. Echo of the Ancients

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 66: 9S makes some ill-advised modifications and tries to jog Emil’s memory.

19 November 11945 4:47 AM

“THIS ACTION IS NOT WITHIN STANDARD SETTINGS AND CONSTITUTES TAMPERING WITH BASE MODEL DESIGN.”

9S is too busy humming to pay Pod 153’s concerns any mind. The changes he is making have no bearing on his combat ability or any of his most important functionalities. It's merely something he thought up that might make V feel a bit more at home.

Though he is made in humanity’s image, 9S is still only an android. He thinks it must be lonely for V to not know when, or even if, he will ever see his family and friends again. It would explain why the rougher edges of his temperament are absent recently. V smiles more, and humors 9S with little things that don’t serve any practical purpose. It tempts him to believe V might be even trying to have fun with him. A strange thought, but not one that he finds unwelcome.

There is change within 9S as well. His memory space is bright and well-organized; even the turbulent memories of Devola and Popola are in order to be neatly processed. His personality core is still in shambles, but it looks better than before. His mind seems full of s. Whether his perception is a result of his mood or the actual truth he doesn’t know and doesn’t dwell on.

It is much more pressing whether #EEB6B1 or #F5B6B6 is the right choice.

9S enters in the fore and his hum breaks apart into a satisfied chuckle. There is no reason for the adjustment not to work exactly as intended.

* * *

 

V paused and raised his head suspiciously. “Do you hear that?”

He braced himself. There was no way to _not_ hear that unmistakable tune.

_“Beepity-dee-beepity-dee-beepity-Beep-Beep-BEEP BAAA~H!”_

9S whirled in time to see Emil’s truck sail from a half-crumbled rooftop toward them. He shoved V off the road, sending him sprawling into a nearby bush, and opened fire with a laser blast that sent Emil careening off course to land on a partially re-constructed school bus that crumpled miserably under the impact. The truck flipped over twice before skidding to a near stop on the other side of the road.

“Owww--!” Emil spun around around to face them, and somehow hopped his truck in place. “Oh, hey 9S! I’ve been wondering where you got to!”

The turn of phrase was as comforting as it was worrying. Emil was probably the only person he’d met since the Tower fall who hadn’t assumed his death, and he sounded unnervingly sure about it. “I could say the same of you.”

“I was trapped!” Emil said with his usual bright blitheness. “There was a bunch of those white blocks in front of my elevator and I had to blast my way out. They were all over the place along all my routes, so I’ve been clearing them. Can’t expect to get any customers if I’m not on the road! Did you need to buy something? I have a ton of meteorites!”

“Uhh, just a second.” He trotted over to where V was indignantly righting himself and brushing debris out of his hair. “You okay?”

“So it would appear.” The cane jabbed toward the grinning skeletal face. “What is that?”

“That’s Emil.”

V’s expression blanked. “ _That’s_  him?”

“Kind of. It’s…one of him. When the aliens came he copied himself a bunch and fought them and a lot of his memories were lost in the process. I’m a little close with this version of him. You mind if I do the talking?”

“On this we both desire the same answers." He waved his cane in a wide ‘after you’ arc. "I leave it to you.”

Emil was humming along with persistent good cheer, seemingly oblivious to their serious whispers. 9S briefly thought it must have been nice to have no worries, but immediately shuddered with guilt. Emil was like that in the first place because he had forgotten most of his worries.

“Hey Emil, do you remember anything about a Gestalt Project?”

The humming stuttered, though the stone face remained grinning and unreadable. “I haven’t heard those words in a long, long time. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I remember what they mean. They just sort of make me sad.”

“What about shades?’

“I think… Mm. There was something… Maybe the Original encountered them? But I’ve never seen any. They were probably gone a long time before the aliens showed up. ”

“Anything you can remember would be helpful,” 9S stressed, feeling a pang of sympathy for V. It really was jarring to try and have a complicated conversation with someone who had a non-responsive face. “Anything at all? Do you remember and Devola or Popola models? The red-haired ones.”

“Oh them? Sure, there was a pair here a while ago, aren’t they in the Resistance camp?” Before he could find words, Emil read his wilting reaction. “Oh… so they died…”

“Yeah,” 9S said tightly. “I was hoping you might remember the old ones who were made when people were still around. We’ve been looking for information about the old world and we found something about you. Or I guess about the Original Emil. He was from that time too.”

“Me?” Emil said brightly. “I-I’m no one at all I can’t imagine why!”

“Do you recognize the name No.6 at all? It seems she was a weapon like you. I think her real name was Halua?”

9S thought he heard a gasp from the stone skeleton. “Oh…! _Halua_ … That name is _very_ important. She was special. Someone he loved. Someone who was protecting him from the beginning.”

“So the Original Emil was there,” 9S whispered in a voice thick with awe. Even though V was beside him, he was an outsider and an anomaly. It was a different matter altogether to know that Emil was a living bridge to a time when the humans of this world had still been alive. “When there were real humans…”

Emil’s head turned toward V. He remained silently grinning with only the gentle drone of his motor going for a long stretch. “I’m sorry, 9S; it really is all fuzzy. But here, if you’re looking for relics, I have this old thing. I haven’t had a chance to polish it up, so I won’t charge you for it.”

Out from the truck bed so cluttered it could have put even Jackass-tier disorganization to shame, a massive golden sword with a dragon’s head pommel dislodged itself. The NFCS circuit engaged and in a swirl of heatless golden flecks, it vanished.

9S crossed his arms and ran a quick scan of what he was dealing with. _Let’s see… ‘Fool’s Lament’? Geez, who even names these things? Used by a guy who tried to save the world, huh. Memoir 2003? Wasn’t that the same year as…_

“V, look!” He nimbly flicked open a display. “There’s data about the 6/12 incident on here.”

V closed in and peered over his shoulder, mumbling along as he read through the data. “Hm. Nothing we don’t already know. Why would such a thing be hidden inside of a sword?”

“NFCS-compatible objects usually have a data storage component.” Someone somewhere had gotten their hands on this weapon long before Emil. It probably came from a time long before androids were actively archiving human history. “There are three more entries, but they’re behind a very specific kind of barrier.”

“One you can’t hack?”

“One that’s too simple for me to hack.” He materialized the sword in his hands. The weapon interface didn’t feel any different; it was just as heavy and unwieldy as the other greatswords in his arsenal. “Remember, I came along at the end of five thousand years of model upgrades. I’m built to hack just about anything made in the last two or three hundred of those. This system is way older than that—the NFCS just taps into it. It’s probably as old as maso itself.”

“So how do you get the rest?”

“Memory alloy,” Emil volunteered. “Certain materials alter NFCS access levels. As long as you meet the parameters you’ll get in, but no matter what you’re gonna need lots of memory alloy to get to the most restricted stuff!”

9S sucked his lips slowly between his teeth and faintly gnawed them. “Are you ever going to explain why you’re so knowledgeable about YoRHa functionality?”

“A good salesman knows his customer’s needs!”

He sighed and let the weapon dissipate. What had he even been hoping for? “Right, right… You wouldn’t happen to have any of that alloy for sale would you?”

“Only a little. Memory alloy is really hard to find these days. It’s really strange, actually! It seemed like it was all over the place right before the tower fell.”

“I’ll buy all you have. And I’d like for you to have a copy of the reports we found.”

“Oh, I couldn't—”

“ _Emil_ ,” 9S said gently. “Even if you’re not the original, you’re still you.  This might be the only thing left of Halua in this world.”

“Mm… That’s not quite right. I feel like she’s somewhere really close by even now… But thanks, 9S.” A dozen pieces of gleaming white alloy scraped their way free of Emil’s cargo, followed closely by two additional weapons—a short sword and a spear that also bore the gold-plated dragon motif. “Since you’re buying my entire memory alloy stock, I’ll let you have these too. And I’ll keep an eye out for any more like them!”

He let the NFCS process it all in a shower of light flecks. “You’re gonna go out of business if you go around handing out relics for free like that, you know.”

Emil laughed. “Don’t be shy! You’ve given me plenty.” He crept in close, tilting dangerously on his front wheel to bring his face closer to 9S. “And you need all the help you can get if you actually found a human to protect.”

9S’ temperature spiked, and he felt V tense behind him. “He’s not a human!”

Emil’s head spun clockwise until it was disconcertingly upside down. “Really? I can’t get a read on him at all and he looks pretty organic aside from those things on his arms.” Quite suddenly, he righted himself. “Oh! Are you also a weapon?”

“In a manner of speaking,” V said with an audible smile.

“Aw, that’s so unfair. I wish I got to be so handsome! Although I’d settle for just a good body too; I’ve had hundreds but they always end up falling apart on me. Ah well! Nice to meet you, V! You guys come visit me sometime!”

9S watched him mosey off, feeling strangely exhausted. Emil really was something.

“Handsome, hm…”

He grinned mischievously. “Maybe you’re his type. He never called _me_ handsome.” His smile faltered; V was squinting at him. “What?”

“What’s wrong with your face?”

9S rushed to materialize one of his larger, more polished weapons. Seeing his reflection, three things immediately became apparent to him: First, his mod had worked; second, he had neglected to specify an area of effect and the default was apparently hard-edged, asymmetrical splotches of bright color; and third, #EEB6B1 was an awful and unnatural shade of pink on him.

“Are you…” V asked in a wavering, poorly controlled voice. “Did you program yourself to _blush?_ ”

His temperature spiked again, and the color came in even brighter and gaudier than before. He thought furiously of some way to explain that wasn’t a mortifying and transparent attempt to save face, but he soon gave it up.

V was already trembling with soundless laughter.

* * *

 

_The three weapons obtained from Emil contain data regarding Old World Events. Summary follows:_

  * _**Fool’s Lament:** A collection of four memoirs detailing the battle between the red dragon and the giant white humanoid weapon. Source unknown. Refinement priority: Low._
  * _**Fool’s Embrace** : A record of thoughts believed to be from the ‘Red Dragon’. It seems to pre-date any events that took place during the 6/12 incident. Refinement priority: Medium. _
  * _**Fool’s Accord:** A long-form record of a prince believed to be the partner of the ‘Red Dragon’. Despite limited pertinent information, Subject V has designated this weapon first in priority._



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who may not be aware: Halua is Emil’s older sister. More on that and what Emil meant by her ‘being very close by’ later, but if you want the general scoop on her and Emil, see the NieR side story: ‘The Stone Flower’.


	37. Changing Thought

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few days with the mysterious devil hunter.

**Day 70**

V had a lot of questions about the blacksmith machine Masamune, but all he knew was that he lived somewhere in the castle and was capable of working on the golden weapons Emil had provided. 9S' first attempt to contact him yielded nothing. All the ways he knew to the throne room were gone and hunting for new ones meant long, slow hours finding paths that weren't dangerously unstable.

While 9S hunted for a new route, V went on a different errand.

The heat was every bit as abominable he expected it to be in a desert that baked beneath eternal sunlight, but he’d have been lying if he said he wasn’t partially there for the chance to get out of the coat for a while.

It helped that the desert was full of interesting things.

The machines there all wore masks, apparently in imitation of a unique culture of replicants that had once occupied the area. Pod 042 read out the reports on a related archeological effort that 9S had aided while he surfed between piles of discarded towerfall on Shadow’s back. It had been called Façade, the people lived by thousands upon thousands of rules, and the spear that 9S favored was a royal relic they left behind. The data in the storage component was related to a succession conflict; nothing V cared for.

In the shade of an outcrop, he pushed sweat-slicked hair from his facet back into the hood of his cloak. In the distance, a cloud of sand so thick it seemed like a solid object whirred on the horizon. Somewhere beyond it was the oasis. Humbling as it was to imagine 9S crossing so much every day just to get water, it was also more proof of his harrowing lack of self-preservation.

Further north, vague dome-like shapes danced in the shimmer rising from the sand. Before he could wonder if they were a mirage, Shadow curled up from beneath his feet and licked at his face.

“I’m alright,” he assured the disembodied mouth. “Keep going.”

To make use of things that were advantageous to him was in V’s nature. An inheritance from Vergil, yes, but also a practical adaptation to being cast out into a body too weak to defend itself. For the same reasons, it was also in V’s nature to rarely be satisfied. Two months into this unexpected post-apocalyptic vacation and he still had his heart set on a hot bath.

Mammoth apartments lay on the border between the forest kingdom and the desert, as mentioned in pod’s archives. Surely in an entire complex there had to be at least one intact basin somewhere?

His hopes dwindled the moment he stepped inside of one. Apartments were simple and identical by design, so he hadn’t picked up on it from the decrepit exteriors, but the insides were blank utilitarian spaces just like the office buildings. Machines and their rebuilding efforts had been there.

They were still there in fact.

V took a moment to watch them from a shaded window. A handful of the smallest machine types were scattered around the remains of a playground. One was holding a doll’s head and pretending to comb hair that it no longer had. Two more were chasing each other in circles with a never-ending echo of stilted ‘ _ha-ha-ha’_ s. Another three were making shapes inside the confines of a sandbox. Strictly inside the sandbox, where they barely fit. Even though sand was literally everywhere else for miles.

Watching them, he understood how 9S could be so stubborn in his beliefs about machines. To someone who only ever had to think of them as enemies, their choices must have seemed random and mindless. Imitation for imitation’s sake. To V, who had no special animosity one way or the other, their behaviors weren’t all that different from actual children playing a mildly unsettling game of pretend. The Red Girls had prevented them ever making it too far past that stage.

Without them in the picture, that was liable to change.

Another group of machines congregated peacefully on the edge of the playground. He couldn’t fully hear their conversation, but he heard snatches about weather and husbands and children and house chores that they couldn’t possibly have.

“You think they _know_ they’re imitatin’ a bunch of gossipy hens?” asked Griffon.

One of them turned to look at them. It had an eye-patch, and a large pink ribbon.

“ _Peeping Tom._ ”

Griffon spread his wings and electricity coiled around his pinions. “Nobody up here is interested in your nuts and bolts! Beat it!”

V rolled his eyes and pulled away from the window, chased by a chorus of indignant cries that rose from the sand.

* * *

 

**Day 75**

When it came down to it, V could have taken care of himself without assistance. Getting food, water, clothing, and information was nothing ‘he’ hadn’t done before. All 9S provided was some streamlining on the necessities and a way to get the rest without having to take it by force. Which was why he rarely held in his critiques when his opinion was solicited. Especially about data. 9S was so immodest about his abilities as a scanner that V couldn’t help but goad him.

But V never criticized the mattress.

It had been acquired without request and he hadn’t expected such an amenity any more than he’d expected Nico to abstain from smoking inside the van. So he’d quietly accepted that it was stiff and utilitarian and would have been at home in a jailhouse. If asked, he told the truth: It was an improvement from sleeping on concrete.  

If only the necessity of sleeping fully clothed hadn’t diminished those gains. Awakening every day was an assault of physical discomfort spearheaded by intense thirst, and today was no different.

Except that 9S wasn’t nearby. Strange. He didn’t like to leave while V was sleeping.

 _He’s up on the next floor_ , Griffon rumbled drowsily. _Said to just come get him if you need him._

“Is that so,” V said as he reached out to Pod 042 for water. “I wasn’t aware the two of you had grown close enough to chat while I slept.”

Griffon materialized at the edge of the mattress with his feathers in a raised pillow around his neck. “Not exactly a choice I got to make for myself. You got no idea what a huge pain in the ass he was after you went and got your guts brined.”

The turn of phrase was almost as revolting as dried stickiness on V’s skin. He dropped his hood and yanked the coat open. Heat rose in cloudy puffs and though the temperature quickly chilled him, it was worth it just to feel air passing through the cotton resistance shirt to reach his body. He tossed his gloves aside to give his hands the same treatment and flexed his fingers.

A screech from above perked his head up. Though it was unexpected, it was a familiar and telltale sound: a violin.  V hadn’t heard or seen 9S practice since he first made the program. He had assumed that it was just a passing fancy the scanner had since lost interest in.

So he practiced when V was sleeping…

He gave a faint twitch of a smile. Vergil had liked to practice alone too. Anything he played in front of others, particularly if it was for his mother, had to be absolutely perfect.  That and Dante was unbearable about letting him practice anything that didn’t involve them fighting.

Griffon nudged against his hand. The ridged bone was a peculiar but welcome change of texture. “You alright, V? You been talkin’ a lot of walks on memory lane lately.” He shuffled his wings and leered, as if he couldn’t quite manage the task of being honest without cracking a joke. “You getting homesick?

Shrugging, V climbed to his feet. “I have done nothing but dig into the past since I arrived. It isn’t so strange if my past rises to the surface in response.”

Griffon answered with an unconvinced snort.

* * *

 

**Day 77**

V paced in a pool of sunlight with Pod 042 drifting behind him, his eyes flinty beneath drawn brows. The cane flashed as it spun over and over in his hands. Fool’s Accord did not hold any secrets or a key to returning to where he belonged. He had never expected it to; that would have been too easy. But the lack of pertinent information was not important. It was a record of a human from another dimension, the only one known to make such a crossing aside from himself.

“FINAL RECORD FOLLOWS:

_THIS IS THE STORY OF A MAD PRINCE. A STORY FROM LONG AGO ABOUT AN ENCOUNTER WITH A DRAGON. IN FRONT OF THE PRINCE WAS A HEAVILY INJURED RED DRAGON. THE PRINCE WISHED TO KILL IT. EVEN THOUGH THE DRAGON WASN’T BLACK IN COLOR, THEIR SPECIES WAS STILL RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS PARENTS' DEATH. _

_THE DRAGON SPOKE AS THE PRINCE RAISED HIS SWORD. “I WILL LET YOU LIVE. WE WILL EXCHANGE OUR SOULS, AND I WILL GIVE YOU POWER.” THE PRINCE THOUGHT ABOUT IT LONG AND HARD, AND DECIDED TO ENTER INTO A PACT WITH THE DRAGON. _

_ IT DIDN’T MATTER WHAT HE’D LOSE, IT DIDN’T MATTER IF IT IS A DRAGON, NOTHING ELSE MATTERED AS LONG AS HE COULD WIELD HIS BLADE OF VENGEANCE. THE ONLY THING IN THE PRINCE’S HEART WAS A PITCH BLACK DESIRE. _

END RECORD.”

Beneath the window, 9S held the spear up to the light. The shape of the red dragon’s head glittered in gold relief on the edge of the handle.

V stopped and traced a finger over the pointed horns. “What of Fool’s Embrace?”

“Not ready yet,” 9S answered. “What’s got your attention?”

V could have thrown a dart at any line of the record. From start to finish there were uncomfortable similarities, but he couldn’t be asked to believe that mere temperament allowed one to cross dimensions. Even Vergil needed the Yamato to accomplish that, and it was not a tool that could be wielded by a mere human. The prince had begun his life as such. Whether or not he still was after exchanging souls with a dragon, on the other hand, was questionable.

He leaned heavily on his cane, his fingers drumming restlessly against the metal. “This prince and dragon must have come from a place where maso already existed. But dragons seemed a more pressing issue than salt.”

9S crossed his legs and the spear quietly re-materialized on his back. “Maybe magic offers some kind of resistance to white chlorination?”

“Or it didn’t happen there at all. Pacts were not only a tool of the gods, it seems.”

“Are you thinking pacts have something to do with why you both were able to cross dimensions?” V stared at him, honestly caught off guard. “What? The contract sounds like that same thing. And it’s kind of unreasonable to think it’s just a coincidence that you and this guy have that in common, right?”

V hummed. He was not convinced the contract was the same thing—his life was not at stake if anything happened to any of the three demons. They drew on his magic to stay alive, and in exchange they were his to use. Pacts struck him as something very different. Something more permanent with a lot more at stake. 

“The place where I met the gods… Physically, it was the church. But for me it happened somewhere on the edge of my being and the start of theirs. A place like a dream. My concern is that it wasn’t the pact or the prince or his dragon that opened the way to this world. All of our records say the giant appeared first. The prince and the dragon followed after it.”

9S was watching him expectantly. He heaved a sigh. “There is not enough information to build a worthy conclusion on and the workings of that world may make little difference in this one. But even if the pact is involved, I don’t believe my contracts count. Just as the bells haven’t called to me a second time, a soul is not something to be bartered twice.”

Though he dismissed it, something nagged V still.

_While thy branches mix with mine and our roots together join…_

He was meant to be one half of a whole being. But he was human enough for the gods. Whole enough to give his soul. Perhaps the nature of his extended existence was more than just a matter of maso in the atmosphere and bore more thought than he had given it.

* * *

 

**Day 84**

The ruins had finally grown too cold and the towerfall too dangerously chilling. He had to leave for better shelter.

The new site was not as terrible as V had expected. Nestled safely in some back alley on the far northern edge of the amusement park, the voices of the machines were absent and the fireworks were just distant, almost comforting booms—little different from gentle thunder.

The interior was small. Faded wallpaper flaked over barren, crumbling plaster gone yellow with age. The floor was covered in a thick crust of dirt where too many generations of dust had settled and matured. Cushions too ancient to display the full glory of their gauche designs clung to couches and chairs whose legs had rotted from beneath them, leaving them hobbled and listing.

Griffon flapped busily, seemingly unaware that the grit that kept settling on him was ancient webbing turning to dust as he disturbed the air.

“What a dump.”

“A dump with an intact window,” said V, trailing his fingers over a blank painting hung in a grimy frame. “And human details. This place has been preserved.”

“AFFIRMATIVE,” said Pod 042. “DUE TO MINIMAL TACTICAL BENEFIT, HERITAGE CONSERVATION EFFORTS IN AREAS KNOWN FOR HUMAN RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY OFTEN PROCEED SMOOTHLY.”

“That’s great but V can’t live in this museum exhibit, it’s disgustin’!”

V plucked a spider from Griffon’s beak. “I seem to recall you threw me in a pile of garbage when we first met.”

“Well yeah, but you didn’t have to _live_ there.”

The window opened without shattering at V’s touch—a good start. The whole room creaked in protest, but only the dust fell. The clatter, when it came, was from outside.

9S jogged in, brushing his hands off on his shorts. “How is it? I found some old fabric we can clean with.”

“A decayed mess,” V said unreserved. “But more intact than I expected. It can be made livable.”

House cleaning was not something he expected or wanted to deal with, but for the semblance of an actual living space, he intended to treat it more like a necessary decontamination.

9S surprised him by having a sensible grip on the process. With a little of Shadow’s assistance, he got all of the deteriorated furniture out and pulled the rotted shelves from the walls and was careful to direct their efforts from the ceiling down.

“I admit,” V huffed, his muscles vibrating unpleasantly with the efforts of scrubbing. “I did not think you a tidy sort.”

9S leaned his chin on the handle of his broom. “I’m not, I guess. But it’s not too different from having a bath.” He caught the mildly confused look on V’s face and rolled his eyes. “The nanomachines that take care of any superficial damage I take technically also keep me clean, but I _like_ baths. Didn’t humans just take baths because they felt good sometimes?”

“More often than merely ‘sometimes’ if we were afforded the luxury.”

His mind filled with a faint scent of soap and masses of bubbles and endless splashing. He could not recall himself or Dante at that age, but the little odds and ends of sensory detail lingered. Maybe imagined, maybe not.

“ _Memory, hither come, and tune your merry notes…”_

“That’s poetry, right?” 9S stood up straight, his expression brightening. “You recite when you’re fighting too; are they incantations? Like with the pod programs?”

“Incantations…” V mouthed with a smirk. “I don’t use those. Poetry merely assists my focus.”

“I did a lot of reading on it, but I don’t think I get it what it’s supposed to be.”

“You are rich in imagination, but many years removed from humanity’s symbols. You may not understand it as easily as music.”

“Not like humans understood it either…” 9S grumbled. “I can’t even get a read on whether it’s supposed to rhyme or not.”

“If I may disillusion you, humans were never very good at agreeing on hard parameters to abstractions.”

9S’ expression dimmed, but only for a moment. “Do you have a favorite kind?”

“There are too many to love only a few. However, I did favor a particular weaver of words when I was a boy.” He sat on the windowsill. “ _And, when night comes, I'll go, to places fit for woe; Walking along the darkened valley, with silent melancholy_.”

9S tilted his head. “That’s… kind of sad.”

“Have I impressed you as a happy man?”

He’d meant it to be smug, and perhaps a little tongue-in-cheek. Instead the bluntness of the words was tempered by how mildly he spoke them, and it was that tone that seemed to catch the both of them off guard.

“It’s not that I thought you were happy,” 9S mumbled. “I just never thought you might be…”

9S’ expression went distant and closed as he retreated into whatever corner of his mind he took refuge in at times like these. V was content to follow his example and put the subject and the discussion far from his mind.

* * *

 

_Report:_

  * _Fool’s Embrace yielded no clarification of existing queries. There is some mention of a curse involving the dragon, but the nature of this curse and whether it had any bearing on the dimension crossing is unknown._
  * _Fool’s Lament has been deemed not of interest as data on 6/12 is abundant._
  * _Note: Unit 9S will follow up with Emil regarding where the items were discovered and conduct an investigation._
  * _Among Unit 9S’ existing weapons catalog, personal data on subject ‘Yonah’ was identified from ‘Iron Pipe’. Her thoughts in relation to her father were found, but it in unclear what relation they have to the weapon. Hypothesis [based on unlikely density of artifacts]: Events related to the Gestalt Project’s inception and eventual failure may have taken place in this region._
  * **_Unit 9S and Pod 153 will begin a wide area scan operation for additional data._**




	38. Secret Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 88: A detour leads to a discovery and to 9S finally beginning to come to terms with himself.

“You sure you’re gonna be okay?”

“Yes.”

“There are no transporters out there so just call and I’ll come back as fast as I can.”

“I know.”

“If they build any more of those weird machines, will you please not engage them alone?”

“If that will stop you fretting over me like I’m a freshly hatched chick,” said V, in a testy deadpan. “I’ve survived far longer than you will be gone with far fewer assets at my disposal. Your fussing accomplishes little.”

9S wilted. It was one thing to leave for a few hours at a time to go to gather supplies. The main sector only maybe 50km from end to end. With his highest quality speed modifying chips, there was nowhere he could possibly go where he couldn’t get to V within the hour. This was different. If he was going to scan effectively, he had to approach it like a mission and spend an extended period in the field.

In this case, the field was the no man’s land to the southwest. Proper scans would take at least a week if he didn’t find anything, and who knew how much more than that if he did, and he was looking at being anywhere from seven to ten hours away at the edge of the agreed upon perimeters. That was a lot of time for a lot of things to go wrong. YoRHa’s final sortie was underway at midnight and before 6 AM, the bunker had fallen, the tower had risen, and 2B was dead.

9S trusted himself, and he even trusted V; it was everything else that he didn’t have any faith in.

He couldn't even rely on the weather.

“REPORT: INCLEMENT CONDITIONS LIKELY TO CONTINUE FOR 2-3 HOURS.”

9S frowned at the churning clouds in the distance from the safety of the forest’s edge. Snow would have been doable, but driving sleet was no condition to push V through. Not even with the promise of a warm room at the end. The risk of humans becoming ill if exposed to cold, wet conditions was high and he’d never be able to focus on scanning if he was worrying about that.

Water sloshed at his side as he slouched his weight onto one foot. “Maybe I can find something to keep you dry…”

V shot him a confused look. “Or we could find something to occupy our time until it lets up.”

“Really?” He looked back at the forest kingdom, his lips pressing into a line at the prospect of aimless backtracking. “Maybe we can look for new foods? There’s supposed to be onions around.”

“And you never took any before?”

“I didn’t want to risk it.” He reached into his smaller pack for Anthurium’s field notes. “Meat is meat, but if I got a plant wrong it might poison you.”

“Nothing looks and smells like an onion but an onion,” V said sourly, with a slight wrinkle of his nose.

9S hid his grin in the book’s pages. “You were a picky eater as a kid, weren’t you, V?”

Above them, Griffon sneered. “He’s still a picky eater. And so sensitive to every little thing that offends his delicate senses. You can’t help being prissy, can you?”

“Just because civilization has been dead for ten thousand years doesn’t mean I intend to stew in my own filth.”

9S bit back a laugh. That really didn’t help V’s case, but he was quietly glad that androids didn’t really produce unpleasant odors.

“How about we go see if the oranges are ready then? Come on, it'll be a good time killer.”

Time-killer, yes; ‘good’ was up for debate. The knight machines were annoyingly active now that the humidity in the zone was down, and fighting them was the last thing he wanted to do with fresh supplies in his bag. It was supposed to be such a simple plan today: do one last supply run, drop the big pack off, and make his way to the designated area. If not for the sleet he could have already been gone. There weren’t even any chips or interfaces he could have used to avoid the issue. Accounting for local weather conditions had always been the task of operators.

V lost patience for avoiding the machines well before they made it through the middle of the zone. In the end, they took the most direct path, and Griffon dealt with any threats that came their way.

As they pressed northwest, it grew steadily warmer with their proximity to the desert. The canopy thinned. The peaks and valleys and rocky formations flattened to open land. A strong herbal scent filled the air. Unlike the barren badlands outside of the city ruins, trees covered in yellow flowers pocked the distance between edge of the forest and the distant orange grove. Gigantism had seemingly skipped the area. The treetops were high, but probably within reach of a solid jump.

V’s shuffling rhythm suddenly fell away from beside him. He was staring off into the trees with a puzzled scowl.

“Who planted these?”

9S glanced up at the twisting branches and shrugged. “Aren’t they wild?”

“There are signs of neglect…” He stepped backward and thumbed a branch of shrub only a little taller than he was. “But trees don’t naturally grow in orderly rows.”

The rows were hardly orderly, but 9S could see what V meant. The biggest and presumably oldest of the trees had generous and deliberate spacing to them that was only partly masked by tall grasses and rising saplings.

If they were lunar tears, he might have suspected Emil. The resistance camp had its little patchy garden, but he doubted any resistance member would have dedicated this much time to planting trees this far out in the middle of nowhere. That left machines. There were none around but planting trees on the edge of a forest was exactly the kind of redundant thing a machine trying to replicate humans would do.

“Pod, run a scan. If there’s anything out here that isn’t flora, I want it on my map.” Pod 153’s antennae flashed, and the scan spread, bringing little odds and ends into focus, but only a single new thing appeared. It wasn’t moving. “That. What is that?”

“REPORT: COMPOSITION MATCH FOR MACHINE LIFEFORM. NO ENEMY SIGNAL DETECTED.”

“So it’s dead already… That would explain the neglect I guess.”

"You intend to investigate?"

9S was already meandering off in the direction of the marker. "Hm? Yeah. I'm trying to get back in the habit. Nothing’s worse than doing a wide area scan twice, so even when I think it’s probably nothing, I should treat it like it’s something."

The dead machine was only sort of something. Just a basic stubby that wouldn’t have been even the slightest threat even if it had still been functional. It was propped up against the short trunk of a particularly shrubby, gnarly looking tree. A straw hat with a bundle of dried out white flowers sat in its lap, clenched between its pincers so it wouldn’t blow away.

9S began the scan and took a deep breath. He was sure he wasn't going to like this very much.

* * *

 

 _11915.02_  
_It has been 4.734 years since I encountered an android. I experienced a strange lock up in my processing. If I fought him, the trees would have been harmed, but if I allowed myself to be destroyed, there would be no one to care for them. But the android did not attack me. He said I must be broken and left me alive._

 _11915.09_  
_The android brought a plant to me. He said that humans once ate them and asked if I knew anything of them. He brought me many more plants to ask the same. I knew none of them. But perhaps I can learn._

 _11916.05_  
_The trees in the distance never interested me. But the android brought a twig with bright orange fruits hanging from it. He was interested in ingesting them. It is possible that he is the one who is broken. I will have to collect data so that he does not harm himself._

 _11916.11_  
_The android obtained animal flesh and attempted the heating process called ‘cooking’. The result was a black mass composed of carbon. Apparently, this constitutes failure. He claims he will try again. He wants to know everything about the process._  
_I feel somewhat excited. Like I am watching a new tree grow._

 _11917.07_  
_I have received a hat made of dried plant matter. The android claims that human gardeners wore them to protect them from the sun. The weather does not concern me. But I am a gardener. I will wear the hat._

 _11918.01_  
_The trees in my garden are called 'witch hazel'._  
_I did not know this until the android addressed me by their name._  
_‘I’ am a gardener, ‘I’ wear a gardener’s hat, ‘I’ grow witch hazel, ‘I’ am Witch Hazel._

 _11918.01.2_  
_He has never seen the flower for which he is named._

 _I19o8.03_  
_I do not think I w1ll make it back._

 _1111!1aDWF99_  
_1-METHYL-4-(PROP-1-EN-2-YL)CYCLOHEX-1-ENE—3,7-DIMETHYLOCTA-2,6-DIENAL—_

* * *

9S stared at the compound and silently sifted through records for matches, vaguely hoping that it was something of interest even though he knew well before the results come back that it wouldn’t be. Yet another machine’s memories taking up space inside of him... He had been preparing himself for this ever since they decided he would be scanning again, but to think he hadn’t even made it out of the region before it happened.

V reached over him and took the book. Each turn of the page was whisper quiet, but seemed like the only sound in the world and 9S was glad to interrupt it with his scan results.

“Limonine and citrol.”

“Pardon?”

“Chemical compounds related to oranges,” he said. “That’s what all that gibberish at the end was. It must have died in the grove after…” His chest tightened. Anthurium had said right to his face he wasn’t good with plants, yet he’d had a book full of meticulous notes without a single flaw. Written by a machine that killed itself to find him a single stupid flower he didn’t even need. “After whatever happened.”

The book closed with a gentle slap, and V moved on ahead of him with the same idle, swaying gait as ever.

“Shouldn’t we leave?” asked 9S. “This is a grave, right?”

“Should we leave the sea because the twins are buried there?” Without looking back, V lifted the cane and twitched it forward for 9S to follow. “Leave the gardener where he rests. Anthurium would not have given you this if he wasn’t at peace with you being here.”

It didn’t feel like peace. It felt like Anthurium had tossed away something important. Was he just in the habit of showing kindness to beings he was within his right to hate?

He shuddered the thought away before it could take hold of him and followed V into the grove. The oranges looked more vibrant than before, but all the flowers were gone.

“The notes never did say anything about how to know if these are ripe...”

V reached the cane out and shook a low, heavy bough. A brief shower of oranges rained down, and he only had to hold out his hand for one to fall readily into it while the rest pattered and rolled through the grass.

9S couldn’t help staring as he peeled it and separated out a translucent segment. “How is—”

As soon as he opened his mouth, V pushed it between his teeth. He bit down on instinct, and his senses flooded. Innumerable pips of smooth pulp slipping against his tongue, the thin membranes popping all at once with less resistance than bubbles. A gushing tide of acids and sugars, tart enough to wrinkle his nose but so light and sweet that his tongue had no choice but to forgive it.

He looked at the other oranges scattered along the ground and licked at his lips. “Do they all taste like that…?”

“Probably not, but there’s nothing to say you can’t go looking.”

He picked one up, his gloomier thoughts all but forgotten as his head filled with the bright, invigorating scent. “I shouldn’t. This is food. You might need it.”

In an advanced maneuver of expression 9S felt a dozen years from cracking on a technical level, V combined a condescending roll of his eyes with a smirk and still managed to convey a sort of amused long-suffering.

“I could eat nothing else all winter and still not finish all of this before they rot.” He tossed his peel aside, and wandered deeper, plucking another orange from another tree with no evidence of preference or rationale. “Do what you wish.”

9S was nearly done peeling before V had finished his sentence. The second orange was as fascinating as the first. The balance of sugar to acid was completely different, the bite a little stronger. Soft crunches joined the texture as his teeth found seeds. He learned quickly that they were bitter and unpleasant and to spit them out well before he noted V doing the same.

He scampered through the lukewarm grove, always keeping V at the center of his erratic orbit. The trees pocked the short grasses without order, as scattered as the occasional piece of towerfall. The oranges hung so low that 9S had to bend to reach the lowest ones, and the highest were rarely out of reach of V’s cane.

Each one was a surprise to open and bite into and he ate them all, even the ones that were too tart, too sweet, too mushy, too watery, or too dry. Ripeness stopped being important after his first five. It only mattered that they were new, that even the bad ones were just a temporary discomfort that could be easily wiped out by grabbing another and another and another until he found one of the perfect ones that without fail sent his senses soaring with what it meant for a thing to taste good. To eat something delicious felt good. It was so oddly addictive, how it didn’t matter how many he ate because there were too many to count, how each new one seemed to make him happier—

He stopped mid-bite.

Juice spilled down his chin and dripped onto his sleeves. He’d felt something similar to nausea before, but never with any matter taking up space in his body. The scent of oranges was everywhere, and a single moment was all it took for it to become a choking, eye-watering stench that didn’t go away even when he dropped the orange and stopped breathing.

Something heavy dropped over his head, blotting out the light, the grove, and the clinging residues of limonine and citrol.

“Your appetite is impressive,” said V. “But it seems you’ve found your limit.”

9S said the first words that came to his mind. “Sorry.”

“Unless you intend to introduce me to what it looks like when an android purges nineteen oranges all at once, you have nothing to apologize to me for.”

Was that a joke? He laughed, more at the concept than the execution. The scent of oranges vanished, exchanged for sweat, oils, mint, and the faint animal musk that lingered in the fur lining. The tension in his midsection eased. He could have eaten more, but he no longer wanted more. He no longer wanted anything.

Despite his full stomach, he felt hollow. When the wind blew, it seemed to pass through him as though he were just as empty as the discarded peels.

“Am I a machine, V…?”

A slight shuffle in the grass answered before V’s voice followed. “Why do you ask?”

“I met a lot of machines like that one. Some more advanced, some not. I hacked into most of them. I knew what they thought. How they thought. I’d always find the same things in machines that lost or couldn’t obtain what they chose to live for. This urge to…” Another wave of nausea welled up. These were Adam’s words and they were caustic in his chest, but there was no way around how accurate they were, and the shame of it felt real enough to disembowel him and release every sweet thing he'd stuffed himself with. “To destroy everything. And to be destroyed.”

V offered silence yet again, and 9S clutched the coat close around him. "I thought it was so irrational but I did all the same things. The framework of my being is the same. Everything I ever thought or felt is contained inside a bunch of machine cores bound in a self-destruct protocol. I'm shaped like an android, but I've already met machines who imitated the human form. Am I... really any different?”

“Of course. You’re YoRHa.”

It was so dismissive that 9S could have kicked him in the shins on principle, if not for the way V’s hand settled casually atop the coat, freezing him in place. “If you were only a machine or only an android, you wouldn’t be here. You would do well to embrace all that your existence entails.”

“To what end? Everyone I cared about is dead, there’s no one for me to fight, nowhere for me to return to, and I’m still here! Doing pointless things like eating and programming violins…!”

“That’s progress.” 9S whipped the coat from over his head, but V’s expression was as far from sarcastic as it could possibly be. “If you are built to be human, it’s natural that you inherited the ability to subsist on pointless things when offered little else. ‘Emotions are prohibited’ has served your development in this regard about as well as N2’s meddling with the machines.”

Okay, granted he had just questioned whether he was a machine, that was too audacious even for V. “I’m the most developed android there is!”

“And a child who cannot see the depths of his own sorrows." V took the coat from him and tossed it into the grass. “I was the same. For a long, long time. And so my miseries increased. I could have… My life could have been different. It could have been better.”

9S clenched his fist against his stomach. ‘Better’ was a premonition of hope too hard to swallow and impossible to digest. It wasn’t just that 2B was gone, it was everyone. The D unit that had been at the oasis was gone. Those strung out B units at the oil field had succumbed to a combination of side effects and maintenance failure. He had searched high and low for 4S in the castle until his joints ached and his body was coated in dust and grime and Pod 153 began to warn of stress-related failures in his motor control. Nothing. The only other scanner he knew and he had vanished without so much as a stray signal. The tower fall had probably killed him and buried him, and hoping he was at rest beneath that uncertain grave was the best 9S could do for him.

Only he had survived, and that was so much more like punishment than providence. He wasn’t so wrapped up in himself that he would genuinely compare their losses, but V did have something at the moment of his mother’s death that 9S didn’t anymore: someone to share his fate with. A brother.

He might have said as much, if V wasn’t already sprawled out on top of his coat, peacefully dozing like he didn’t have a care in the world.

It was probably for the best. For once, a little solitude to think about things on his own might be for the best.

* * *

 

From Project Gestalt Reports recovered by YoRHa Unit 9S:

  * **_Black scrawl_** _– Believed to be a virus by then-sentient replicants, the scrawl was a malfunction of the replicant’s body—a DNA-level breakdown caused by the relapse of the corresponding gestalt. A fully relapsed Gestalt prevented the recreation of the replicant, as the data source was functionally corrupt._
  * **_Relapse_** _\- the catastrophic loss of sentience seen in certain Gestalts. …With some relapsed Gestalts beginning to attack Replicants, there is an urgent need to take comprehensive action._
    * _Note: Overseer 22 [a Devola model] was convinced that an unknown technological defect in the Gestalt transformation process was responsible for relapse._



 


	39. Bird About Town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 100: Griffon hunts for something to do, and finds a lot more than expected.

“Rare of you to leave a contact request.”

“Well, you were so _cranky_ when I woke you up last time…”

V cracked a smile. “You have something to discuss, then.”

“There’s a structure I’d like to investigate on the other side of the bay. Seems like it used to be an extension of the factory, but the machines abandoned it when they couldn’t re-establish the bridge.”

“Sounds serious. You expect it to be worth it?”

“Could be. You've received the rest of the data right? Signal is kind of spotty out here."

"I have."

"Great. The factory area is likely to be dangerous so I'm coming in to run maintenance and fully prepare before heading that far out. I should be back in the area in the next few hours.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

Griffon yawned as raucously as possible. So the prodigal boy-bot was returning to the roost. Couldn’t happen soon enough as far he was concerned. Much of a sad sack as he was, his company was a cheap price to pay to not have to cater to his majesty’s every whim.

V glanced back at him. They couldn’t actually read one another’s minds—contract didn’t work like that—but he always seemed to know when Griffon was thinking something that would have annoyed him if spoken out loud.

“Perhaps you should get some exercise. You’ve been getting fat.”

“I’m a nightmare, ya ninny, I don’t gain weight any more than you do.”

He tilted his head and faintly clicked his jaws. Actually, V was looking kind of different. Not exactly any less of a string bean, but something was changing. He’d thought it was the coat at first. Properly fitting clothes went a long way to making him look like proper devil hunter. But these days even when he wasn’t in the coat, he looked the way had Griffon felt since resurrecting. Energetic and pulsing with magic to spare. Less corpse-y, for sure.

Whatever. Griffon wasn’t getting fat, but what he was getting was fuckin’ bored. Even tryin’ to find the alloy the kid needed to do all his weapon data nonsense was such a pain in the ass it was barely even worth the effort. They’d spent hours one day trying to turn that shit up and fun as it was making scrap metal out of any machines that wanted a piece of them, it sort of soured the mood to find so much nothing.

“Maybe I’ll take you up on that after all,” he said, stretching his wings and bobbing toward the window. “Hey, kitty! You comin’ with?”

Shadow rumbled something appallingly lazy from where she lay sprawled out on V’s mattress, and he scoffed. “And you call yourself a demon. Fine fine, I guess somebody’s gotta look out for the boss man, keep him safe from all these peaceful clowns.”

Avoiding the occasional burst of fireworks, he wheeled out west toward the forest.

There was a scorched spot in the canopy, and he could just make out a few intact metal huts connected by metal bridges and ladders, like the weirdest tree fort ever. A handful of the shrimpiest kind of machine were milling around with one big coppery one that looked specialty. Didn’t have the wind-up toy look to it.

Griffon passed it right on by. If memory served, that was where the kid said the peaceful machine village was, and there was nothing he could imagine that was more boring.

Now the castle, that was more his speed. They avoided that side of the river like the salty plague it was, but there were machines hanging around the place that actually looked like they’d be a challenge. Right at the gate were two of the huge, barrel-shaped ones they’d only ever seen once or twice deep down in the cavern, and they were both tricked out with glowing electric spikes on their arms and legs. He landed on a window above and shot one just for the hell of it. It did its whole red-eyed attack mode shtick, but he sat just as smug as could be. In this section of town, the machines didn’t use any gun tech, so all it could do was stare up up him and look pissed.

“You guys are really dedicated to this medieval times bit, ain’t ya?”

A spear whizzed by him, just barely grazing his beak. He circled away from his perch, gaining altitude until he could see the group of machines in an upper chamber trying to aim at him. His eyes narrowed, and electricity crawled over him, building until he released it one bright flash that dropped them all where they stood.

He landed in the broken upper window. They weren’t dead, but the thing about machines being the enemy was that a good shock knocked the little ones on their asses without fail. “Was tryin’ to skewer me really necessary? I mean it’s flattering that you think I can take out one of those walkin’ jet engines by myself, but not in my pay grade.” With sparks popping between his horns, he sneered down at them. “Now, say you’re sorry.”

The second, stronger shock was more than enough to fry their systems. They detonated into a fine rain of screws and shrapnel. It was pretty nice in there once the fires died down. Big fancy hall, strong stonework, definitely fit for a king. Too bad in place of a throne the only thing in there was an empty metal crib. Hilarious, but not the most regal thing.

Fun as the detour was, he had a destination in mind and it was probably about time to get to it. Heading further west and north, he settled on a branch over-looking the old church. No bells or any of that appalling racket from the so-called gods, but it still gave him the creeps. He wouldn’t have come there at all if he could find so much as a single damn crow anywhere else. 

Griffon didn’t go around letting it be known he could chat with pretty much any bird he wanted. That kind of Disney princess shit was bad for a demon’s reputation in a crowd with disrespectful personalities like Nero’s and Nico’s. But he couldn’t help a certain kinship with crows. A lot of small time demons (himself not included, of course) liked to hang out with crows and adopt their likeness. They were like the closest thing the human world had to naturally occurring devils.

Griffon preferred the company of crows best for very simple reasons: They weren’t afraid of fuck all and they had all the best gossip.

From what he heard, something was going on with the machines, who they called an assortment of entertaining names ranging from ‘blank-face’ to ‘loud metal idiot’. A bunch of them had recently taken up yelling about ‘becoming the new king by retrieving the sword’. The crows were having a fantastic time watching them all inevitably fail one after the other because the waters were several times deeper than any of the ones who tried were tall. Without fail, all of their attempts ended with them getting swept over the edge of the waterfall and joining the junk pile in the ravine. 

Griffon would have killed to see the look on the machines’ faces if he could somehow retrieve it, but that current was wicked. V would barely make it a foot in before his skinny ass got taken for a swim, presuming they even wanted him to go in as far as they were talking. There had to be some way to get it. The way the crows talked about it falling out of the sky was too much to pass up. But Griffon wasn't much for diving, so it'd have to wait until he took the news back to V. 

“What about the androids,” he asked. “The ones over in the city?”

The whole rookery exploded with racket about an amazing treasure unearthed in the center of the city. A shiny white rock too big to carry and too hard to break. He’d have dismissed it for tower debris if he’d heard that from any other kind of bird, but not crows. Some of them might prefer quartz to a diamond but any one of them could give you a long, terrifyingly detailed talk on the differences. Somewhere in the din, a few names got slung around. ‘Boom woman’ was the one he heard the most, and whoever she was, she was the one who found it.

Griffon grinned. “Sounds like I’ve got a date.”

* * *

The androids had been busy. The path from the top to the bottom of the crater had been paved with identical white bricks presumably made from the abundant tower blocks. A neat crescent of open ground in the crater had been given the same treatment, except for the opening of a tunnel where yes, in fact, there was a huge, shiny white rock.

Memory alloy. A whole goddamn obelisk of the shit, taller than his wingspan was wide and long enough that he couldn’t see the end of it from his perch atop the tunnel’s mouth. But fascinating as that was to learn, it was boy-bot’s problem to see if he could negotiate a chunk for his projects. Griffon cared more about what was in the crater’s crescent.

A light snow was falling and an android presumed to be the ‘boom woman’ was leaned forward under the hood of a dead truck, cursing engine within an inch of its non-existent life.

“Oh, come the fuck on!”

Truly, a woman after his own heart.

He snickered, and she whirled around with her gun drawn. The thing about being a talking bird around those unaccustomed to it, Griffon found, was that they were always ready to assume literally anything else was happening. So even though her hazel eyes stared directly at him all but on fire with suspicion, and her aim was correctly on his chest, she didn’t fire. Because birds didn’t talk. Even enormous blue ones with horns, six pupils, and a few too many jaws.

It wasn’t every day he got to enjoy these little pleasures, so he split his beaks and wiggled his three tongues at her.

She curled her lip, put away her gun, and turned back to her truck with a grumbled. “Ugly as hell.”

“S’pretty fuckin’ rude of you.”

She turned back to him, more slowly this time. With a shift of her jaw, she slammed the hood of the truck down and crossed her arms.

“You some new type of machine?”

He shuffled his wings and shook the light coating of snow from his body. “Do I look mechanical to you, honey?”

“No.” From beneath her cloak she whipped out what looked like one of the soda cans if somebody went full Frankenstein on it. It was only maybe half of one, with a bunch of cables and nodes poking out of it. The arms had been torn off. Replaced with a trigger that launched a wire of familiar transparent magic around him and yanked him right into her grip. Close enough to see she was pretty cute, in a mean-faced sort of way. “But I’ve seen machines do a lot of weird shit recently.”

“Can’t argue with that,” he said comfortably. “I hear it was pretty non-stop around here back in summer.”

“And what do you know about it?”

“Nothin that interests me personally, but it’s probably a bit of a sore subject for you metal-based types. Towers and bunkers and nothing wars.”

Her hands clenched, sinking painfully into him even as her eyes glittered. “Oh, I am gonna love dissecting you.”

“Buy me dinner first.”

He hawked electricity into her face. Nothing that would take her eye out, but enough that she spat some colorful language and dropped him.

The wire dissipated the moment she took her finger off the trigger, and he soared out of her reach. Bullets began to cut through the air, way too close for his comfort, and he took the liberty to firing right back. She ducked behind the truck while he laughed. It was the most fun he’d had in weeks.

“Awww, whats-a-matter? You were coming on so strong as second ago!”

She leaped onto the top of the truck with another hodge-podge mechanical mess in her hand. Only this one had something he recognized: a pin. She pulled it with no hesitation and her launched it at him with fatal accuracy.

“Woah, woah, are you _nuts_?!”

He wheeled. The brunt of the detonation missed him, but the heat and force at his back sent him beak over tail. By the time he righted himself, there was a thick black cloud spreading over the crater and he thought that was probably a good sign to call it a day.

* * *

“Ayy, boy-bot, you’re back! You bring me any souvenirs?” 9S froze, and Griffon had to laugh. “Lighten up, kid I’m joking. I found that alloy you were looking for.”

“Memory alloy? Where? How much?”

“A lot. Like a lot a lot. A chunk big as a tree at least. It’s too big to move, and your android buddies have it in custody, so it’s your problem.”

“Hmm... Maybe we should leave it alone then. I still have some leftover, and we don’t have another weapon of interest right now.”

“Mighta found one of those too. I got it on good authority the metal heads in the forest are killin’ themselves tryna pull some weapon out of the river.” He scratched slowly at his chin with an oily laugh. “It fell outta the sky and they think it’ll make whoever gets it the new king, so it must be good, right?”

The kid’s expression blanked for just a tick before he cracked one of those big dumb smiles he usually reserved for V. “Thanks. That’s…actually a lot of good intel.”

"Did your informant mention  _when_ it fell?" asked V. There was an intensity in his expression Griffon had almost forgotten he was capable of.

"Nah. I dunno if it's related to us, but whether it is or ain't, it's real deep in on the bad side of the woods, so it'd be much appreciated if you'd sit this one out and let the kid do the retrieval."

V's expression clouded, but he moved on from the topic with a short sigh and a wrinkle of his nose. “Why do you stink of smoke?”

Griffon hopped onto an ancient, useless radiator and preened busily. “Some broad tried to kill me with a grenade when I went to look at the alloy. Oh, boy-bot, you might get a kick out of this: She had one of those soda cans all tricked out.”

“She had a _pod_?” 9S demanded.

“Not like yours, but yeah. It looked like she put one in a blender and then pieced it back together without a manual. Sounded like she wanted to do the same to me.”

The kid wobbled and slapped a hand over his face. “Griffon…” he groaned. “That was Jackass! She’s really not someone you should have tried to fight.”

“Hey, she started it. All I did was defend myself.”

“Yeah, well, I hope you’re ready to keep defending yourself.”

Griffon’s eyes slimmed into a pleased squint. He liked the kind of woman who’d try and kill him on sight.

 

* * *

 

Report compiled from data discovered by YoRHa Unit 9S in the southwest sector:

  * _Maso was cleansed from the world with the destruction of the final Red Eye in 3287 via a ritual performed by an android known as 'the Celebrant'._
  * _Popola and Devola model androids were able to convince some Replicant populations to peacefully rejoin with their Gestalts following these events, however these were a minority. Sentient Replicants were hostile to the concept of releasing their bodies to entities they considered separate and foreign, and war broke out between the two._
  * _The fail-safe Grimoire system, designed to forcefully re-unite the two halves of humanity was considered. However, the Gestalt and Replicant of the Original each gained one half of the system's primary administrators: the Grimoires Weiss and Noir._
  * _The Gestalt Original kidnapped Subject Yonah(R) to re-unite her with Subject Yonah(G), who had been in a half-relapsed state since her discovery in approximately 2050._
  * _The ensuing conflict between the originals to secure the safety of their respective Yonah entities resulted in the death of a Devola android, leading to the corresponding Popola model going out of control._
  * _The Replicant Original went on to kill the Gestalt Original, causing relapse rates to spiral out of control, and ultimately lead to the overall failure of the Gestalt project._
  * _The final Gestalt was lost in 4198. It can be assumed that any existing Replicants were also lost at that time._




	40. Past Is Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 103: V finally finds a trail, but not the one he wanted, and allows 9S to return a favor to calm his mind.

Three days he had been waiting for news about the strange sword. Three days in an agitated cloud while 9S repaired his body and accompanied Griffon to the woods where they agreed it was best V didn’t follow. Hours and hours and hours waiting in silence interrupted only by the occasional rusty creak of half-rotted park rides swaying in the winter wind, until finally the familiar chime of an incoming communication had stirred him, and he had eagerly risen to his feet. Only to be greeted by a nervous hush. The weapon’s information came to him before a single word was exchanged.

The shape of it gritted his jaw. The name and description rose bile in his throat. But it was the data, a mere two lines, that had set fire to him that even now he could not cool.

**My mother’s robes were poppy red.**

**In gray ash, I lose my innocence.**

The sword of the black knight, Nelo Angelo, never had a name. But someone had taken it upon themselves to name it ‘Humility’.

Griffon did most of the talking. He knew where V’s head would be after seeing something like that and kept the jokes to a minimum. This was a joke at his expense, and someone was laughing. When V found this unknown audience, he would very likely find his way home.

If not, he would have the satisfaction of their destruction at his hand either way.

Having a living example of the folly of curiosity as a companion should have given the situation an appreciable ring of irony, but 9S’ timid voice, asking what the next step should be, had come as close as anything to boiling the blood in his veins. It wasn’t the boy’s fault, but the only words he could speak to him in the moment were a command: _Take it to the blacksmith_.

He’d obeyed in a hurry, clearly grateful to end the communication.

Perhaps foolishly, V had expected that to be the end of it. 9S would slink off to get on with his field mission and leave him to digest the appearance of a relic that had even less business existing in this world than V himself did. To come to grips with the possibilities of whatever else was hidden under the next three layers of access. Instead, 9S was still there, tiptoeing around the edges of V’s perception in the darkened room.

“I believe there is somewhere else you should be”

“I was…” he began, his voice just as cautiously out of reach as the rest of him. “I thought maybe I could help you before I left.”

“Was assisting me not the purpose of your work in the field?”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.” He stole a little closer, creeping around V’s side with the nervous tension of a deer eyeing a might-be predator. “The machines are having some big fireworks show today, so I thought maybe you’d like to do something other than sit here in the dark.”

V’s knuckles gave muffled pops around his cane. “It strikes me convenient that you returned at exactly the right time for such an event.”

Hurt flickered in 9S’ expression. “I only found out today…”

“Do not push the limitations of my patience.”

“Seems like I already have, given you just accused me of something we both know isn’t true.” He crossed his arms and his voice dropped to stormy grumble. “You already know why I came back when I did…”

“…So I do.” V sighed. The hours spent treading the more fanged domains of his temper was starting to wear on him. Old behaviors welling up. Old mistrust that 9S had long since worked his way beyond. And to what end beyond leaving him in the position to be upset by a child offering childish comforts? Foolishness. He pinched at the bridge of his nose. “You have no idea what you found today.”

“I don’t need to. I know it’s not easy to have pieces of your past turn up where you know you didn’t leave them.”

“If you understand so easily, you must grasp that I’m in no mood for festivity.”

“V, some days I’m not in the mood to _exist_.” His brow relaxed, and he let his arms fall from their tight grip over his chest. “But every time I get like that, you do something to distract me.”

“Your mind affects your body in rather tangible ways. It behooves me to keep your thoughts out of dark places if you’ve important errands to run.”

“I’m sure you have a dozen totally utilitarian reasons to cheer me up and none of them are the least bit personal to you.” V shot him a warning glare, and 9S held his hands up peaceably. “Fine, fine… Look, I’m just trying to return the favor. Take your mind off things for a bit. Then I’ll be gone and you can brood all you want.”

V took a deep breath and let out an even deeper sigh. This was that wretched game all over again. 9S wasn’t going to leave the matter alone or forget it no matter what happened. For all that he could barely comprehend receiving kindness, he was compelled to heap it onto others.

“Fine,” he said, rising from his seat. “A favor for a favor.”

* * *

The shape of the roller coaster loomed like a metallic python coiling around the park’s central castle, its scales written in the crisscrossing pattern of thousands of backlit beams. The cover of the platform might as well have been a fern to hide him from the gaze of some ancient predator remembered only in the way his hairs raised and sweat beaded on the back of his neck.

9S smiled just disarmingly enough to betray his spiteful intent. “A favor for a favor.”

“Which favor exactly is this meant to return?”  

“What’s wrong, V?” The roller coaster rattled onto the platform in no hurry and 9S planted a foot against the first car. “Scared to take a little ride?”

An unimpressive attempt to goad him, considering the company V once kept. He draped himself across one of the more inoffensively soiled seats in the second car. The leading car with its empty headrests and remnants of gaudy yellow trim and the open track beyond earned an uneasy lurch from his abdomen. This was going to be every bit as unpleasant, if not more so, than he expected, but it was the level of disruption he needed.

He knew that he had miscalculated when 9S prevented the safety bar from dropping over him.

“Don’t get comfortable,” he said with a grin. “We’re gonna have to jump.”

The carts were already leaving the safety of the platform. There was no time to reconsider, and barely enough to tighten his grip on his cane before it was too late. The speed didn’t bother him as it once had, but the drops and climbs moved his organs to their own sadistic whims. Yet it was the turns that truly triggered his urge to turn tail. Androids may have lent their more human touch to the park’s buildings, but what could they truly be expected to know about the upkeep of a roller coaster?

Not enough to keep the carts from subtly listing off the tracks toward the outer edge of a hard turn.

Suddenly, 9S was attempting to haul him upright. He’d remained standing with his hand on the safety bar as though it were merely the reins of a familiar but unruly steed and was pointing at a balcony just below the castle’s heart-shaped hole. No, more specifically he was pointing to a tiny ladder on the side of it, tucked away and probably only meant to be used for maintenance, and there was no time to think about what madness had allowed him to discover it. There was only the promise that the ride was over.

He leapt and Griffon carried him to the only place it went: the curved metallic slope of the castle’s roof. He was still getting his bearings when 9S caught up, looking none worse for the wear and kicking his legs out over the roof’s edge.

V sagged backward, overjoyed just to be on solid ground even if that ground was a dozen stories in the air. He fought demons, he reminded himself; survived falls, leaped on faith into Griffon's clutches from perilous heights, seen people disemboweled and breathed the stench of the Qliphoth. Yet thirty seconds on a roller coaster was a greater nemesis, and a more sickening experience than any of these. 

How  _galling_. 

The fireworks stirred him out of his misery. Their first and only visit to the park’s main boulevard had been short and tense, but he didn't recall so much noise or such extravagance. Looking down from their perch, the ruined amusement park was aglow in the area's strange half-light. Bulbs and lanterns of all colors lined the avenues. The few rides that weren't totally destroyed were actually moving. Even the fallen ferris wheel had a light in every carriage, waved by machines who were merrily throwing anything that could be thought of as festive, from confetti to flowers to glitter. He recalled the amusement park machines being festive, but this put their previous displays to shame. 

This was more than a mere show. They were celebrating something.

With the question of what on his tongue, he turned to 9S only to find him holding a bottle so distinctive that even though it could have technically been anything, he immediately recognized it for what it was.

"Of course," he said with husky laugh of amused resignation. "Androids can drink."

“Devola and Popola used to make this out of sap from the Forest Kingdom. It’s safe for human consumption.” He smiled sheepishly and held it out. “It was my plan A to cheer you up.”

“Have you ever actually had any?”

“Function altering substances aren’t really smiled on when you’re stationed in orbit.”

V pulled himself upright. The scent from the bottle, once uncorked, wasn’t terrible as alcohol went. Astringent and herbal, with a stickiness that made sense given the main ingredient. He took a sip. Beneath the bite of the liquor, it had a strong flavor of maple.

He twitched his cane toward the sea of twinkling lights below. “What occasion is this?”

“New year. Or, the eve of it I guess. Humans used to stay up until midnight for this, didn’t they?”

“I suppose they did,” said V, turning the bottle idly in his hands.

He had memories of making the effort—fragments of repeated fights with Dante about who would fall asleep first that inevitably exhausted them both well before the turn of the hour. Only once had their mother successfully managed to quell them long enough for the three of them to welcome the new year together. She had climbed with them up onto the dining room table and with both his and Dante’s hands in her own, leapt the moment the clock struck midnight. He remembered wondering what the point of leaping was, but she was laughing and cradling them in her arms and for a brief moment it felt like there was enough of her love that he didn’t have to fight Dante tooth and nail for it.

His brow furrowed. Griffon was right; Something was happening to him. Frequenting his past was unusual but finding so many parts of it whole in his mind, coming at the merest provocation like a cat to familiar fingers—that was new.

Stranger still, they were _happy_ memories, and that was enough to warrant a deeper drink.

“I didn’t expect you to be the drinking type,” 9S said with faint awe.

 “I am all but certain I’m not.” He pushed the bottle back into 9S’ chest and dropped his legs over the edge of the roof into the sunset colored light rising from below.

Unnerving as it was, he reached deeper into himself. It was as easy as dropping into crystalline waters. He remembered the warmth of her shawl and the exact way her hands had felt around his, large and strong and cool. How he always took her right hand hoping to catch a glimpse of the bracelet she swore was only a common accessory, but even as a child he’d had his suspicions otherwise. It was all there, as though it had only happened yesterday.

_While thy branches mix with mine, and our roots together join…_

_Joys upon our branches sit, chirping loud, and singing sweet._

Had wholeness brought him these recollections? The maso, or worse: the gods?

Even if it was a bad omen, or the beginning of yet another cruel turn in his fate, it was worth coveting. Unlike the one who cast him out, the worth of the memory that had found its way home this evening was not lost on him. All the more reason he had to know how Nelo Angelo’s sword had arrived and who had been so lacking in the proper respect as to place his memories on it.

He let the fireworks call him away from that thought. After so long among bones and remains, here was scenery that lived, if not necessarily breathed. The cacophony of machine singing from the central avenue was so far below them that it was indistinguishable from the din of a common marketplace. They attacked the concept of festivity with the same straightforward extravagance as anything else. To them, there was nothing unreasonable about the concept of fireworks that never ended or a park that never closed.

“You think they’re really having fun with all this?”

V raised a brow. 9S’ tone was more quiet than curious, but his expression was open. “You dislike it?”

“I don’t think it’s really about like or dislike. I just never got what was supposed to be fun about a lot of the things in this park. The more I try to figure it out, the more I think humans just enjoyed heights and things that went fast.”

V shook, a small burst of laughter escaping despite himself. “An oversimplification, I should think, but not inaccurate. These are things to excite the human sense. Androids are far beyond that and you all the more so for your advanced make. I cannot fathom what you would find fun.”

“Well…hacking drills, I guess. I spent hours on them. On the bunker, all scanners had access to this module that archived every known security pattern used by the machines and I used to spend a lot of time working at the hardest ones.”

“And I presume you enjoy satisfying your curiosity as well.”

9S eyed him warily. “Yeah…?”

“Did you ever have fun doing anything that had nothing to do with what you were designed for?”

9S went stone still, only his eyes moving as he searched frantically for a truthful answer. With only a little hesitation, he took a drink of his own. A rather long one that ended when the bottle was empty.

“I had fun whenever I wasn’t alone.”

Right on the heels of that matter-of-fact statement came another of those enlightening moments when he was reminded that 9S wasn’t human.

V had only begun to feel the prickling heat and hazy thoughts that heralded all the rest of alcohol’s effects. 9S barely had time to sit the bottle down and drop his hands into his lap before he began to sag onto himself. He’d turned that silly blush programming off, so no color came to his cheeks, nor did his eyes grow watery, but his entire demeanor changed in the space of a few seconds.

“9S? Are you alright?”

“No, I’m not!” His lips didn’t move. He’d stopped bothering with the formality, and instead spat through a speaker that sounded like it might be somewhere around the base of his skull. “I was never alright! I wasn’t built to be alright! Everything about my design is so goddamned stupid I can’t take it!”

Ah. So 9S was _that_ kind of drunk. V leaned back from the onslaught to give the android the space to continue, and bit his lips to keep them in a straight line.

“4198… 4198! Humans were already dead for a thousand years before the first aliens even got here! You know android production was in decline? They were shutting down the factories? There was a civil war!”

“Really? That wasn’t in your report.”

“There’s tons of shit I don’t send you cause it’s not about you or humans or dragons or any of that extra-dimensional whatever you need—it’s about androids! Civil war! Rebels didn’t care about humans or their legacy or the heritage maintenance efforts or any of that and just left to do their own thing. Peacefully. They called it a conflict, but the whole thing lasted two weeks, which is just fucking _hilarious_ when I think of how YoRHa had models specifically designed to put down deserters.”

9S tottered to his feet. His motor control left enough to be desired that V instinctively hooked his cane into the boy’s collar and yanked him back from his precarious closeness to the roof’s edge. A spark shot from somewhere as 9S compensated to avoid falling flat on his back.

“I just don’t get it, V. The aliens attacked us first! Emil was there when it happened and he actually remembers it! They had every opportunity to build the first combat androids different, but instead they rallied as the Army of Humanity and built them with the same morale-sucking flaw iteration after iteration when there were a dozen better answers for a base imperative!”

V’s shoulders were shaking. “So you, _ahem,_ could have done it better?”

“I _would_ have done it better. But they were six thousand years too early to build me, and by the time they did I was the worst thing they could’ve made.” He kicked the empty bottle, sending it arcing out into the night to almost certainly shatter on some unsuspecting machine’s head. “If they really wanted the YoRHa plan to work as intended, why the fuck did they even make me?!”

V’s whole body was shaking, and he was hard pressed to keep the tears from his eyes. “I-I cannot say.”

“Cannot… Are you _laughing_ at me right now?!”

The dam burst. V laughed with honest mirth that surprised even him. It didn’t sound like anything or anyone he knew, including himself, but he couldn’t help it. Not even when 9S lifted him bodily in a threat they both knew wasn’t really there, no matter how much of a face he made. He had seen the android get stubborn and frustrated and defiant, but anger (and very likely the deceptive creep of inebriation) made the resemblance stronger than ever.

He wiped at his eyes and pressed a hand to 9S’ cheek, static prickling on his fingertips as 9S’ tensed. “You sound… like Nero.”

The anger went out of 9S like a bird startled out of a bush. He sat V down as slowly and carefully as he possibly could, his eyes as wide as his grip was tight. When he spoke again, he seemed to have remembered his mouth, though the voice that came out was as dry as whisper in the desert. “Is Nero your son...?”

V hummed. That was complicated, so he cordially clapped 9S’ shoulder instead of answering and turned toward the festive expanse of the park.

“We’re going to jump.”

9S startled out of his lock-up. “We’re going to _what_?”

“Jump. Right now. To ring in the new year.”

“What are you talking about?! Is it even midnight?!”

“Hardly a matter of concern when the sun never sets or rises.” He stepped toward the edge. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

Perhaps he hadn’t expected V to actually make the leap, or maybe he was alarmed to see V not raise his arm to let Griffon safely carry him down, because no sooner had he reached the peak of his upward arc, 9S collided with him in mid-air. The addition of a few hundred more pounds of highly dense machinery didn’t alleviate the fall so much as it collapsed their free fall into a sky-splitting drop. 9S swung himself every which way, finally managing to get his arms around V’s chest while his skinny legs trailed after them like twin comet tails. Beneath V’s coat, his tattoos shifted, and Griffon emerged spitting curses that couldn’t be heard over the scream of fireworks rising past them, and their thunderous booms as they filled the sky with light and color. On either side of him, the pods worked in tandem to slow their descent.

V’s longer legs touched down first. It wasn’t the worst fall he’d ever taken, but there was no way to stick the landing with 9S clinging to him, and couldn’t avoid toppling over. 9S was up immediately, while he lay content on the cold stone.

“Are you alright?!”

“Of course,” V said breathily. “That was quite exciting.”

"Exciting..." 9S dropped flat onto his back and heaved a sigh. The silence didn’t last long before his weary voice dispelled it. “Is this the part where we say happy new year?”

V smirked. “If you wish.”

“…I’m good.”

* * *

_Compiled Report on ‘Sleeping Beauty’, per data retrieved by 9S:_

  * _A network computer designed in the shape of a tree which was tasked with keeping the memories of the Gestalt Project and all that led up to it in a network of emotion and human memory. These memories belonged to living humans, which were utilized in the recreation of Replicants._
  * _Further records indicate that it seemed to have withered after the loss of the Original, however it took the shape of a single giant flower resembling a lunar tear, suggesting the data may have been left intact in some form._
  * _Retroactive addition pulled from previously unnoted letter:_
    * _“PopoIa sent me a new book about a great big tree … In the book, the big tree kept on waiting and waiting.”_



_Hypothesis: Sleeping Beauty may have some relation to memory implantation in standard AI androids._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last stop on the fluff express, we're headin' to plot country.


	41. Theogony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A log of 9S’ field mission to the defunct sister site of the Abandoned Factory.

**1 January 11946 6:22 AM**

For lack of need to ingest, the metabolism of an android was centered firmly on the existence of combat enhancing drugs, and had been for the last several thousand years. The idea was not only for them to act fast, but to also have any negative side effects pass fast.

9S considers this a good design as he drops an armful of oranges onto the mantle and peeks into the bedroom. Conceptually, a hangover is up among the more rational human things he’s had to learn about. He likens it to processing delay as a side effect of extended overclock. In an android, it was minor nuisance that could be corrected through a 2-minute recalibration routine. For a human, or at least for V, it was an aversion to all light, sound, and motion, and despite the passing of 94 minutes since V woke, it showed no signs of letting up.

“You sure you don’t want me to stick around?” 9S asks.

V shifts, but not by much. “Go.”

“It might be awhile until I get back.” He hesitates to bring it up, but it’s a valid tactical concern. “I could stay until Masamune is done with the sword.”

V shakes his head, and waves a hand vaguely in the direction of the window. “Getting it faster won’t reveal who put data on it or how it got here. Go.”

“If you say so. Remember to call if you need anything, and I’ll… Er, nevermind. You know all that already.”

A faint puff of laughter answers him. “I do. Take care, 9S.”

The words catch him off guard. His previous departure to the field went unremarked on, no different than if he were only running out to get water. It isn’t the first time V has requested he take care of himself, but it is the first time he’s uttered it under such mundane circumstances. A farewell rather than a standing maintenance request.

His instinct is to process it as the latter and ‘I will’ rises, but what races ahead and escapes first is a simple. “You too.”

* * *

 

**1 January 11946 9:36 AM**

9S does not believe humanity to be contagious. Logically, there is no way that his physiological functions would change out of mere proximity. Yet he has grown superstitious over the long winter. Androids inherited human tendencies for social imitation in order promote group cohesion and improve team work. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. If he has been imitating a human that has become ill, it doesn’t seem too far-flung that he might also be experiencing less than optimal function in some way he doesn’t realize.

It’s this that spurs him toward a final check at the camp, only to be shocked to find a pair of machines and a pair of androids barring the way. All four are armed. He approaches them slowly and in clear sight.

One of the androids lowers his weapon. 9S recognizes his antiquated plating—Bouvardia.

“What’s going on?”

“A peace treaty is being worked out.” 9S’ eyes widen. “I know. I can’t believe it either. There are still hostile groups out there, but the war might actually be over.”

9S doesn’t know what to make of the idea. The war has been the furthest thing from his mind for months now, and peace feels just as distant. He sticks to his business. “I just wanted to have a quick filter check. Is it alright if I go in?”

Bouvardia discusses the matter with the machines on guard with him. It shouldn’t surprise 9S; they must have a leader in there and he can’t imagine everyone in camp is pleased with this arrangement. The machines are single-minded and suspicious and something in their speech pattern tells him they are from the forest kingdom. But they accept Bouvardia’s explanation that the camp’s information officers want 9S to stay well-maintained.

The inside of the camp has limited machine presence. Just two or three of the more mobile brand of stubby hanging out near Anemone’s tent alongside a familiar shape.

“Pascal?”

The bronze head turns, green eye-lights flickering in a painfully familiar gesture of delight. “Oh! How nice to see you here!”

“Yeah…” he manages. “You too.”

“I was hoping you had survived. I wanted to thank you for suggesting the name Pascal. It felt so natural I ended up adopting it!”

A lame smile is all he can manage. The last time he saw Pascal, he was happily selling the bodies of his previous villagers. This Pascal does not remember them or how he cared for them, and it twists in his gut afresh. It isn’t his place to make this one aware of who he used to be. If new Pascal is enough like his previous self to sign a peace treaty, the truth would only needlessly hurt him.

“Are you the YoRHa unit?”

The voice is not a match to any that 9S has heard before. The owner is just as unfamiliar. Her silver hair briefly speaks YoRHa to him, before her sharp golden eyes tell him otherwise. Her clothing is sleek and white, dotted with black nodes and gold buttons. Deeper inside Anemone’s tent, he spots several more dressed similarly, but in a mottled array of tans and grays that make them hard to keep in sight. None of them share her eye or hair colors.

Before he can address her, Jackass sidles up next to him swings her arm around his shoulders. “Yes, this is YoRHa Unit 9S. 9S, this is Commander Theta. She’s with the Army of Humanity.”

Jackass has never been a friendly type. 9S knows she isn’t starting now. Her hand is too tight on his shoulder, and something in Theta’s expression unnerves him.

“I understand you’ve been doing some research out in the ruins.”

He nods, his eyes never breaking from hers.

“And you’ve been making your reports regularly?”

“When I have things to report, ma’am.”

Theta smiles. It is emptier than the void of space and sends an illusion of cold ghosting across his sensors. “It’s admirable to see your work ethic so intact.”

The resistance knows he has been conducting scans and digging up ancient data. There is no reason to hide it, just as there is no reason not to give them access to what he’s been finding if they want it. It keeps things calm, and gives Anemone something tangible and practical to present to those who aren’t fully satisfied with her allowing him to come and go on a mere hope that he will come across something about YoRHa’s makers.

Theta already has access to that information. Given the choking friction 9S feels being between her and Jackass, she has probably already asked for it. There is a conflict here that he doesn’t understand, but he grasps that he is somehow at the center of it.

“I’m sure you have to get back to your signing,” Jackass says with only barely concealed hostility. “Sorry for the interruption.”

“Not at all.” She makes a brusque salute and glances down at 9S. “I look forward to your work.”

As soon as her back is turned, Jackass snatches 9S and drags him to the repair bay. Though she leans casually over the curtain rails, her weight shifts from foot to foot. It’s the closest he’s ever seen her to fidgeting.

“What’s going on?”

Jackass shoots him a withering glare, and sternly shakes her head. “No questions. Do what you came to do and get out of here.”

* * *

 

**5 January 11946 2:09 AM**

9S favors a steady cruise that won’t wear his joints to metal shavings beneath his skin. Barring the occasional break to check integrity, he has kept this pace since leaving the city.

The tracks he follows are ancient and rusted. In some places, they are not there at all. In others, tall plants have sprouted up in the black remains of rotted wood. Muted sunlight twinkles on the sea to his right while clouds roll in from the west. There will be snow soon, but he will reach his destination before this change in the weather reaches him.

When first encountered the abandoned factory, it seemed derelict, but the sister site is much worse. An overwhelming aura of rust and decay emanate from it well before it is more than a blackened shape in his sensors. He resists the urge to increase speed, and takes in the slowly magnifying details. Ivy snakes along smokestacks, providing structure to what might have otherwise fallen long ago. Moss encroaches over the filth-coated walls and wild grass sprouts in every pocket where the sunlight can reach. Untold years of dirt have piled up without any effort to stop it, and the structure resembles a mountain more than a construction plant.

The doors, when he finally squeezes between the trees to find them, are still intact. They are too large to force open, and too primitive for him to hack. He takes a deep breath and starts to climb.

It’s surprisingly easy. Construction materials are scattered all over the exterior slopes. At the top, he looks down on a gutted interior. Criss-crossing walkways cover an empty air-space surrounded by rings of warped parts melted together by a massive heat source. More so than a mountain, it resembles a volcano that has long since lost its fire. But what 9S sees, he knows is not the work of any natural eruption.

It is an exit trajectory.

Something had emerged from this place. Grun comes to 9S’ mind. The hole is maybe just big enough, but there is no trail of destruction leading to sea. Or to anywhere. Whatever left this place had taken flight once it escaped.

He hopes with every centimeter of wiring in his body that there isn’t a satellite-sized machine bird flying around somewhere.

* * *

 

**5 January 11946 4:15 AM**

With Pod 153’s assistance, he touches down gently on the highest walkway. The depth of the chasm is more noticeable from there. He knows that he will have to get down there somehow, but first he should secure his exit route. With great care, he works his way down the interior of this mountain, through cluttered piles of beams and pipes and parts that don’t match any machine life he has ever seen. There are no familiar parts there at all.

He wonders what they could have been building.

The door he could not access from the outside is just as impenetrable from the inside. The mechanism is so ancient it may as well be clockwork. He looks up at the vast circle of light in the ceiling. It’s further away than he thought. The climb down didn’t feel long but he is so deep in that he worries getting out will be tough.

“Pod, are there any vents or run-off pipes I can use to get out of here?”

Pod 153’s antenna flashes briefly. “UNKNOWN. REGIONAL POD NETWORK HAS MINIMAL DATA ON THIS LOCATION. PRIOR SCANNING EFFORTS ENDED IN PRE-MATURE WITHDRAWAL.”

“What? Why?”

“HIGH INCIDENCE OF EXTERNAL INTERFACE DETERIORATION IN ASSIGNED SCANNER UNITS. CAUSE UNKNOWN.”

His head snaps up. “Incidence of _what_? Why didn’t you tell me that before?!”

“NO REQUEST FOR INFORMATION WAS SUBMITTED.”

9S scowls, but his mind is already too hard at work to waste resources expressing irritation. ‘Interface deterioration’ is specific. It’s one of the symptoms of logic virus infection, but if that’s what Pod meant, it’s what she would have said. Virus-unrelated interface deterioration from an unknown cause means there is something in here with him that he is not prepared for.

Securing an escape route becomes his top priority. “Load program R030, single shot, 100% power.”

Pod 153’s chassis splits open like a seed, and the shadowy outline of a hammer appears above it. As it charges, the shape grows more solid, the white outline growing neon bright.

9S presses himself tight against the threshold and covers his ears. “Fire.”

The hammer falls against the door’s center and the inner hall of the mountain ring with the impact like a single enormous bell. 9S’s eyes clench shut against the onslaught. All around him, debris shifts and falls in clanging, clanking landslides of junk.

Cold wind on his cheek tells him that the doors have been opened. The noise begins to subside.  Upon opening his eyes, he first thinks the reverberations must have damaged his visual systems. He runs a check. There is nothing wrong with him. The sudden red tint stems from vast, swirling cloud of rust particles. He walks in tentative steps toward the nearest walkway, carefully suspending his breathing to avoid clogging his filters. The open air above his head makes him feel safer than hugging the unstable walls.

An echo rises from below. He peeks down over the railing, thinking something must be shifting. He sees nothing. The echo grows louder, like something humming. He activates his sound analysis graph hoping to get a more precise read on it.

It’s flat.

“Pod… Are you picking up anything?” Silence answers him. “Pod?”

The smooth, unreadable face of Pod 153 turns to him. Her arms and metal claws move in smooth gesticulation, as they often do when she’s speaking. But he can’t hear her.

The humming grows louder. He feels he is on the edge of something. That he is being _pulled_ toward the edge of something. His connection to his body severs and he drifts unbidden into the interstice between hacking space and physical space. The humming becomes a song, and he hesitates. This has happened to V. But 9S is not human. He isn’t sure he has a soul to give. So where is it that he is being called to?

The joyous notes follow him as he collapses into the corroded railings, pulverizes them with his weight, and falls into the mouth of the mountain.

* * *

 

**Date and Time Unknown**

The hacking space, if it is hacking space at all, is golden.

It is the most beautiful place he has ever seen. A network branching in reverse from a thousand individual points, connected in complexity that even he fails to fully process. would have taken N2 another ten thousand years before they could reach anything like this. It looked like a neural network comprised of neural networks, in an endless recursion, every one of them resonating with one another in a song beyond anything he has ever known or imagined.

And amidst all of this interconnectivity, 9S is alone. Outside of them, looking in.

_Will you live with us?_

He wants to. But there is someone waiting for him.

_Will you live?_

He isn't certain. To know why he should, even though everyone keeps telling him that he should, remains a struggle.

_Will you discover your will?_

How is he supposed to do that? How is he supposed to _want_ that? This life was only made to be thrown away in service of a purpose. To do or expect more than that—he doesn’t understand. Can no one give him an answer?

_Let us live. Let us all live, together!_

_Consciousness! Pain! Joy! Sorrow! Anger! Shame! Loneliness! The future!_

_The meaning of **Life**!_

* * *

**29 January** **11946 10:38 PM**

**_BOOTING SYSTEM—_  **

_ MEMORY UNIT: GREEN _

_ VITALS: IRREGULARITY DETECTED _

_ BLACK BOX TEMPERATURE: NORMAL _

_ BLACK BOX INTERNAL PRESSURE: ABOVE AVERAGE _

_ POD CONNECTION FAILED TO INITIALIZE _

_ MULTIPLE SYSTEM FAILURES DETECTED _

 

The booting sequence completes. 9S awakens, but it several more moments before his cameras display more than static. The world is upside down. His body sprawls atop a beam, his head limply hanging off the edge. He cannot tell if the lack of color is due to damage or the darkness. His other sensors come sluggishly to life. Cold prickles against his cheek and the exposed angle of his neck where snow has piled up on him.

His body does not respond to his lethargic command to wipe it away. He tries in vain to move any part of him, but only his eyes respond. His motor control centers are all dark, and worst of all, his hacking is down. He cannot boot his systems from within, and with his connection to Pod 153 absent, she cannot do it for him.

He lays there, staring at the pinpoint of light from the opening of the mountain, and it may as well be a star in the night sky.

The date fills his chest with pressure. A sob escapes from his speakers, but moisture does not come to his eyes. That functionality is offline as well.

“You are awake, Unit 9S.”

He gasps and rolls his eyes to find the source of the voice. “Who’s there?!”

“I am Beepy.” The voice is loud. Though 9S cannot see it, this machine must be massive. “I will not harm you. I am also undergoing repair.”

“Where’s Pod…?”

“The floating unit? She is below you, but I believe she has entered some sort of power-saving state.”

Of course. Pod 153’s last action would have been the full power attack program. While she is extremely efficient and has a backup battery in case of emergencies, she does require energy to function. Because pods lack complicated things like filters and fusion reactors, they draw and store their energy from the one source that is ever present: The sun.

A resource in short supply down at the bottom of this pit. For him to be online at all is evidence of a stunning amount of effort on her part.

The pulse of his black box slows and the pressure returns to normal. The situation should alarm him; it **does** alarm him. But he cannot stop anything from happening to him now, and there is something peaceful in that.

* * *

 

 **30 January** **11946 6:09 AM**

Beepy is a refreshingly quiet partner in the darkness. Like the pods, he doesn’t say much when not prompted.

Having had hours to gather his memories, 9S can no longer contain his curiosity. “Was it you I spoke to when I fell? That gold thing?”

“Yes. ‘I’ saw ‘us’ speaking with you when you joined our frequency.”

9S blinks. He has that much control over himself now, it seems. He recalls how strange the events preceding his fall were. Now he understands. Beepy exchanges data with his network on a frequency that must be accessible to scanners. The access method isn’t as clean as connecting with machines, hence the interface issues. It makes sense. Beepy’s network isn’t the same one the machines use. The shape of that network has almost nothing in common with the structure of a machine’s mind.

There is nothing but time for the both of them, so 9S asks. “What exactly are you?”

A shift in the dark answers him; the giant making himself comfortable.

Beepy— _this_ Beepy sharing the dark and telling his tale—is a sub-unit. He was released to interface with strange machines and androids that warred on the surface. When the hostility ceased and his larger self integrated those who wanted to go with him to see the outside world, this sub-unit remained behind. Through the frequency, he dreams of the stars and knows that ‘they’ are still going. Still singing their song of life somewhere in the universe. Their wish and will, fulfilled.

The sub-unit remains because he wants to remember. The ability to give words to the feeling of embracing one’s will is one he holds dear. He wants the word for the one who shaped that will. His search is over four thousand years old now, on and off between rounds of repair and attempts to strengthen his ability to recollect with hardware changes.

“You haven’t found it yet,” 9S guesses.

“No. But I have remembered his form.”

A light shines from Beepy’s dial-shaped eyes. In their feeble glow, 9S sees innumerable carvings on every surface. Every single one is of small, bipedal creature with a round face and gangling limbs. They are crude and clumsy, but there is a playful energy to the drawings.

“You weren’t built by aliens were you…?” 9S asks.

“No. My maker has been dead for nine thousand, three hundred, and twenty-two years.”

9S takes this stunning revelation in stride. Physically, he doesn’t have enough motor control back to do otherwise.

Beepy is a robot. An honest, antiquated robot. Limited AI, if any at all, no bio-components like the machines, or complex neural networks like androids. The time frame also means that the drawing is of something that could have only existed at that time. 9S has frequently wondered but would never have imagined them looking so strange. He understands now why they were also called shades.

“A _gestalt_ ordered you to do all of this?”

“He did not order me. It was merely the only data that remained of him when I first awoke. He wanted to see the outside world. It was…our promise. I believe he was my friend.”

“When did you do it? Leave Earth, I mean.”

“Four thousand and three hundred years ago.”

9S’ chest heaves. He is not fully sure if he is laughing, crying, or merely wheezing.

Beepy is the one. He is the god from the mountain of fire who gave machines consciousness—thoughts and worries for their futures and their purpose in the world. And it wasn’t only machines, but androids too. He the reason the war suddenly stalemated.

His voice shudders at the edge of hysteria. “Why did you do this to us?”

“I was afraid. I witnessed you killing each other endlessly and thought that you wouldn’t do so if you only knew life. I believed you deserved to choose for yourselves whether you wanted to impassively follow such terrifying orders or grow beyond them.”

9S closes his eyes. Wasn’t there a human saying about this? Something about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. “You have no idea what you set in motion.”

“You may tell me, if that will ease your distress.”

9S hesitates. The prospect of laying it all out to anyone is as daunting as the idea of having to live with it inside of him forever. He doesn’t know if there is any meaning to opening up that place within him. He doesn’t now where it ends.

But Beepy is probably the closest he will ever come to meeting someone responsible for everything that has happened, and that thought alone breaks him.

He tells Beepy everything.

The machines and their meta network killing their creators and sabotaging themselves to keep themselves from victory, because victory would have left them lacking in purpose. How they forced themselves to suffer and repeat humanity’s failures in hopes of furthering their evolution.

How the androids, treasuring their lives just like Beepy wanted, lost the will to fight in such high numbers that the YoRHa plan was created. To give them something they could throw their lives away for.

He tells Beepy about 2B. About 2 _E_. Their cycle of meeting, death, and reunion and how he has no idea how many times it happened.

All the machines that he himself had killed when it all fell apart. The ones who cursed him, the ones who begged to be spared, the ones who cried for their mothers, the ones that goaded him—all dead.

The androids in the colosseum. The Forest King. Pascal. The endless terror and fear and pain as they all died just to be reborn and die again for something that had long since lost any meaning.

 _That_ is the legacy Beepy left when he decided to pass on the flame of life left by the little soul dancing on the walls.

“It would have been better to feel nothing and know nothing.” 9S voice is hollow in his speakers. The swell of his emotion has come and gone, and he is exhausted. “Then, nothing would have been lost.”

“That is correct. A machine is free of the pain of living.”

Very slowly, Beepy reaches to a blank space on a freshly fallen sheet of scrap metal and begins to scratch a fresh image of the gestalt. “One of the very first units I shared my will with immediately leaped to its death. I did not understand, but the things that unit thought and felt and the conclusion it reached were a choice it made of its own will. In the same way, the conclusions of the machines and the androids were also of their own will.”

The scratching stops. Beepy has had 4000 years to practice this shape. It isn’t a wonder it takes him no time at all. “Do you wish to destroy me, Unit 9S?”

“…No. It won’t mean anything. It won’t…bring anyone back.”

“I am familiar with that feeling. Though I search for his name, I know that we will never meet again. All that remains of him is that promise. My self and my song. It is…painful at times. But that pain too, deserves life. At least, that is what I believe.”

“And if you never find it?”

“Then I will I have struggled in the name of something precious to me to my final moment.”

* * *

 

 **31 January** **11946 5:48 PM**

“Unit 9S, I believe the ants have found your lost component.”

9S snaps out of hacking space. His systems are still in shambles and need more repair than he is equipped to perform, but the ability to do anything at all is its own reward. What Beep calls ants are tiny repair units similar to his own nanomachines. They are hard to see in the gloom, but he sees his own severed leg sliding toward him from further up in the junk piles.

He drags himself along the beam to reach it and braces himself. Unlike his arm, the reconnection of a leg is intense enough that he nearly loses consciousness. But he holds on, his breaths short and sharp as the pain subsides.

“You are looking better,” Beepy says, as he scratches out another drawing.

“Not better enough to get out of this hole. My motor cortex is a mess, I’m just barely holding it together by diverting power reserved for combat routines. I tried waking pod up, but she’s not responding, and I don’t want to do anything drastic.”

“You trust her actions.”

Taking far too much time and concentration, 9S manages to get his fingers around the black shape and lift her enough to see her. “I do. She took care of me when I didn’t want to be taken care of.”

“I see.”

9s sets her in his lap. Beepy’s repair units are not equipped to complete his maintenance. He is at a loss. “You know, with my hacking online I could probably look in your memory banks for your friend’s name.”

Beepy laughs. It’s an odd, halting sort of sound. “You are not equipped to interface with me, Unit 9S. I shed that functionality long ago.”

“Didn’t I interface with you before?”

“Only when I sang. It is not the same thing. You existed outside of us.”

9S remembers that part, but he isn’t convinced. There must be something to it. Something he can do. Come to think of it, Beepy hasn’t sang since then...

A flicker interrupts his thoughts. The orange color is distinct, even in the pit. Pod 153's emergency signal has activated.

“Pod?” 9S calls frantically. “Pod 153?!”

An abrasive voice answers, not from the pod, but from above. “Holy hell, you’re actually still alive!”

“Griffon?” 9S totters too quickly to his feet and neatly trips over a rusted beam.

The blue eagle cackles and even though 9S hates that sound, it’s the best thing he’s heard in days. “Nice demonstration of how you got down here, dipshit. Man, wait’ll I tell V you’re not dead!”

9S picks himself up with renewed fervor. “V is here?”

“Sure. Soda-can picked up a distress signal like three weeks ago and the gang’s all here. But you understand he ain’t comin’ down to see you; boss man’s even less built to get out of here than you are right now.” He spreads his wings and takes off the surface. His voice echoes down with rare sincerity: “If you got a plan, now’s the time to think about it, cause I can’t carry you.”

9S stares up at the pinpoint of light above, with his pod still clutched in his arms. That single star that he cannot reach is where he has to go. If he doesn’t figure out how, that’s the end.

Behind him, there is a shift. Beepy is looking at him. “As you said to 'us', someone is waiting for you.”

“Yeah... A really arrogant guy who acts like he has all the answers and constantly calls me a kid.”

“You do not like him?”

“That’s the weird part, I don’t but I do. I could be dead right now, and if there’s any place I could see 2B again, I’d be there. Instead I’m with him. I told myself that as long as he’s alive, 2B’s life wasn’t for nothing. Her suffering, everything she did as 2E, it could all mean something if I just kept him safe. If I was useful to him. It’s not like I don’t know that someday he’s going to leave, or he’s going to die. I know I’m going to end up right back where I started. Alone.”

His emotions are moving at thousands of miles per hours in a dozen opposing directions. His regulation is probably in the gutter with the rest of his functionality. It doesn’t surprise him, and he doesn’t try to fight it. Not when he begins to smile, or when he begins to cry.

“Even though I know it can't last… I really want to eat oranges with him again.” A small, self-effacing laugh escapes him. The words are already leaving him by the time he realizes how much he sounds like Anthurium. “Isn’t that just the most irrational thing you’ve ever heard?”

“Perhaps. But I have found that living is not a very rational process.” Beepy rises to his feet and scoops 9S into the safety of his massive metal palms. “Let us live, Unit 9S.”

The piles of scrap and junk that fill the pit and coat its floor rattle and rise. Beepy is full of surprises, 9S thinks, as he pulls old parts to his back with some kind of finely controlled electromagnetism and begins his ascent. 9S does not allow himself to be too enraptured by this display. Other parts are rattling off of Beepy’s body, and it is clear his repairs have been allowed to languish in favor of working on 9S.

“You’re gonna fall apart!”

“I will not die. The ants will repair me.”

“But what if you lose your memory?” He grips Beepy’s hand with his own lumbering fingers, yelling to be heard over the thrum of his scrap wings. “2B told me there’s value in the you that exists at this moment! Connect to your network! Don’t let this go!”

“But your interface—”

He knew it. “Just trust me!”

Beepy begins to sing. Even under the strange circumstances, is it a song of triumph—of the joy of being alive. It reaches out across the frequency that Beepy shares with themselves, sang back to him from somewhere far, far away.

9S feels his consciousness slip into that strange space, and gives himself to it. Again, he awakens in golden space. Now he understands that at the end of all those branches are individuals. Single lives that Beepy interfaced with, who chose to become themselves with him. The song is theirs too. They all exist within his framework.

9S is still outside of them. Alone. He cannot sing such a song yet. Instead, he cries out to them with everything inside of him.

_“Please help me!”_

His voice reaches them. They make way for him, pulling him through the corridors of Beepy’s mind, and ushering him into its deepest places. Soon, he is alone. They cannot go where he goes. He runs along a darkened path illuminated by his experience, his skill, and his familiarity with this process.

Beepy has interfaced with androids, and machines, but never with a YoRHa.

And 9S is the best there is.

Fragments of burnt out memory flicker like the faint electrical signals in a dying unit. He catches one in his hands. Holds onto it even as it sizzles through his mind. Memories of a battle. Of metal wings beating against a metal ceiling. A shadowy creature with a gangly body kept close to him. On the floor with him. It’s sorry. It tried so hard…

_“9S!”_

That familiar voice calls him back, snatching him out of the memory and out of the golden light into the cloudless January day. It takes him a moment to re-orient himself, but V is there. Standing stark in his black coat against the snow-blanketed landscape. 9S almost laughs, thinking that such a spoiled guy came so far.

Beepy extends his arms to let 9S down, and 9S feels them stuttering in their efforts. He is not clear of the pit, and his wings are failing. He will fall.

9S shouts. “His name was Kalil!”

Beepy’s dial eyes flash bright. His song rings through 9S and through the mountain. It is not a mere frequency, but a melody that bounds through the emptiness like a child at play.

“Ka..lil! _Kalil!_ Together!”

His immense wings break from his back. He crashes through the chasm, rebounding off the walls in a booming din that causes the whole mountain to shudder.

9S watches from Shadow’s back as they flee to a safe distance. With a vast groan of falling metal and earth, the mouth of the mountain collapses in on itself. A red-hued cloud of dirt and rust rise in its place.

“Are you alright, 9S?”

It feels like it’s been a lifetime since he last saw V. There’s a look of relief in his features. 9S thinks that whatever the reason—his resemblance to V’s son, his utility, or even the off chance that V was genuinely worried—he is happy that V looked for him.

The strains of a tune touches 9S’ consciousness. A golden host singing a beautiful song. Beepy is alive. Unlike the machines, content to die when they found what it was they were looking for, Beepy has only returned to himself. They would sing forever, somewhere far from this world, with the name of the soul that gave him life held inside like the most precious treasure.

_Thank you, Unit 9S._

“Nines…”

Worry appears in V’s eyes. To him, 9S must sound incoherent. “What?”

9S smiles and closes his eyes. Even he isn’t sure which of them he is speaking to. He is only sure that he wants to sleep.

“You can…call me Nines…”

* * *

 

From the dreams 9S reported while undergoing maintenance at the resistance camp:

 _The robot Beepy, who would pass down knowledge of the human soul and what it meant to live, lost himself and Kalil to a group of three._ _The first was a man with white hair who commanded a white book. The second was a woman with silver hair who battled with monstrous strength. The third was a grinning stone face atop a skeletal frame._

_Hypotheses:_

  * _The white book was the Grimoire known as ‘Weiss’_
  * _The white-haired man was one of the Originals_
    * _9S reports that gestalts did not look human. This man would have been the replicant._
  * _Emil was present for the destruction of Beepy and appears to have been a friend of the Original replicant._



_Additional item, insisted upon by Unit 9S upon his repair:_

  * _Commander Theta of the Army of Humanity bears a near-identical resemblance to the silver-haired woman in Beepy’s memory._



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Fire of Prometheus" is a pre-Automata short story of how one robot made in ~2600 became Automata's only actual god. While was busy worshiping humans, Beepy emerged like Truth from her well and delivered humanity.
> 
> I have my own opinions on what Beepy's song sounds like, but one of you (who will go unnamed out of courtesy) gave me Voyager by Bump of Chicken and honestly I listened to it the whole time I was drafting this.


	42. Snow and Ash - Side A

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 156: V faces a relic of his past.

“THIS POD HAS NOTICED A LAPSE IN SUBJECT V’S ATTENTION. PROPOSAL: END REPORTS FOR TODAY.”

The proposal lingered in the stale air, neither accepted nor refused. Pod 042’s voice had faded away to white noise in the background of V’s thoughts what felt like hours ago. Again he was pre-occupied with his memories, so clear and particular in their details. What fascinating details might he find if not for the amorphous unease that had come to occupy his mind alongside them?

Were he a more sentimental man, it might be tempting to think he was just that worried about 9S.

His restlessness coincided neatly with Pod 153’s distress signal waking him from an already fitful sleep, and it had persisted for most of the long trek it took to reach the distant factory and for much of the trip back. All through the weeks it took to retrace their path, 9S had babbled intermittently in the throes of some mechanized fever dream. Troubling, with the knowledge that androids supposedly lacked the ability to dream. A rational debrief of what had happened to him out there had only come the day before, and only that morning had he finally finished his repairs and promised to head to the forest kingdom.

This brought V some relief, admittedly, but it had little bearing on the weight that pressed in on his stomach and crept along the bones of his spine. He kept recalling Vergil’s moment at play, unaware that anything in the world was wrong while just on the edge of his horizon, the house was burning. Unpleasant a memory as it was, it should have lacked sufficient bite to perturb him.

Yet it wouldn’t go away.

The familiar heavy knock of 9S’ footsteps on the cobblestones reached through his preoccupied haze. He took a slow, readying breath, and pulled his fingers through his hair.

9S appeared in the doorway just as he was finding the action was a lot more involved than it once was. “It’s getting long, huh?”

V let the question slip by. The mottled scarring around 9S’ leg had smoothed, and all of the rust and filth had been washed away. In only a few days, he looked nearly new again.

“You don’t have to eye me like that,” he said. “I got the sword, just like I said.”

V smirked. “Quite overdue.”

“I did offer to stay until it was done.”

“I may have taken you up on it if I knew you’d end up making a sabbatical of it. How fortunate that the god _you_ found was rather more benevolent.” He smiled easily, momentarily forgetting the sickly feeling that gnawed at him. “It’s good to see you well.”

9S nodded energetically, his smile somehow even sunnier than before. He raised his palms and the sword materialized in a brief pop of sparks. “I checked to be sure the data was all unlocked properly, but I didn’t read any of it.”

V stared down his nose at the offering. Here again was another tether to the man he might or might not be; a line to dark years when neither of them were their own master. No mere nightmare this time, but a very real metal eyesore whose every line spoke to him in languages he only hoped he had forgotten. He willed himself still, willed his mouth silent, willed himself steady as he struggled with sickly memories of being strung up like a fly in the web of a spider. The description of the weapon rose in mind, as sharp as when he’d first read it.

_A sword forged in hell, wielded by a demonic knight known as The Black Angel._

The bile climbing through him receded, leaving only a sheen of sweat to say it was ever there.

9S was watching him, his expression relaxed and patient. As though he understood something important and difficult was happening between V and the sword he only knew by the false name someone had bestowed it.

He had no idea, and V realized with a prickling at the back of his neck that he didn’t either.

“I appreciate your discretion,” he said finally, gesturing to the wall with his cane. “Leave it there. Though I hate to cut our meeting short, I think it would be best if I held my reunion with this sword in private.”

“Sure,” said 9S, wiping his hands off on his coat once the sword had been set down. Did he feel something from it? Or was V’s discomfort so strong that it had rubbed off on him? “I’ll go get some supplies. You’re probably sick of having to do it yourself.”

He denied the jab the dignity of a response and ran his fingers through his hair again.

“Do you want me to just cut that?”

V looked up with a blank expression. 9S was hovering just at the edge of the doorway, looking somewhat expectantly at V’s hair. “You’ll forgive me if I doubt that you can do so to any worthwhile effect.”

“Just this once, I’ll give you that.” He grinned and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Scanners were the only male models, and not that many of us were made. There was kind of a lot of incentive for us to master our own nonessential grooming routines.”

That was quite possibly the most mundane, timelessly human thing V had ever heard him say.  

“Come on,” 9S urged. “My memory’s basically one long recording. I can make it look just like it did when you got here.”

“How do you propose to—” From his pockets, 9S produced a small but surprisingly clean pair of scissors. V’s brows drew. “And you have scissors because…?”

He gestured them toward V’s coat, draped over the metal frame of a chair in the corner. “Did you think I just hacked up a bunch of leather with my sword or something?”

V drummed his fingers at his cane. He couldn’t shake the feeling that 9S was perhaps more interested in this than he should be. Restless nerves gave his imagination amusing but highly unlikely explanations; the boy’s attachment to humanity leaned more toward doting than unsettling physical keepsakes. Perhaps it was just a novelty to him, or another hastily thought up means of being helpful...

He brushed his reservations away as a consequence of the sword hanging over his mood like a guillotine and hooked himself a chair to sit in. It was becoming a bother, and if 9S wanted to cut it, they should just get on with it.  

A bolt of self-preserving instinct shot through him the moment he felt an unfamiliar touch slip between his nape and his collar and heard the metallic shift of the scissors. He clamped down on it, but not quickly enough to avoid 9S’ notice. There was a pause, then a quick series of snips. A tickle of hairs falling down the loose resistance shirt. The android moved around him and quite conscientiously did the rest of the job where V could see him. Given how easily he took it upon himself to move V’s head to his wishes, he didn’t seem to regard the act as personal. And why should he? V himself hadn’t realized how much of his trust it would require until he was faced with the reality of it.

Vergil didn’t like to be touched. Whether due to his own disposition or because he had to work so closely with others, it didn’t manifest often in V, but apparently he was not so free of that aversion as he’d assumed.

“Done,” 9S said proudly, immediately drawing back to a polite distance. “Sorry if I spooked you at the start. I didn’t think you’d be uncomfortable.”

“Neither did I.” V idly brushed loose hair from his shoulders, and pushed his hair back a third, more experimental time. He didn’t care enough to actually check his appearance—it felt right, and that would be enough until after he finished his business with the sword. “I don’t have much experience with this sort of thing.”

It sounded more vague and sentimental than he’d meant it. 9S, luckily, didn’t seem to latch onto the implication. He’d crossed his arms and tilted his head, in the way he did when something failed to add up.

“You never cut Nero’s hair?”

The cane slipped from V’s fingers. The clatter as it struck the floor was thunderous, yet it made all the impression of a pin dropping in the silence as they stared at one another. 9S with his wide eyes and dropped jaw, frozen in place on the realization that he’d put his foot so far into his mouth he was probably already digesting it; and V with his mind blank and his eyes on the loose white strands of 9S’ hair.

“I only ever saw Nero with his hair short.”

He bent to retrieve his cane and stood, keeping his eyes firmly on the sword leaned against the wall. He had no idea what kind of face he was making, only that a shame he had only ever associated with defeat was burning him alive from the inside out. “You should go.”

9S footsteps tapped a stilted rhythm toward the door and paused. “I know the coat makes you sweat, but it’s supposed to snow. So…Take care.”

V pressed his lips to a thin crease, and waited for the android's footsteps to fade away. Soon enough, it was just him and the sword and the insistent visions of sunlight and bright, puffy clouds. The bottom of a hill carpeted in long but neatly kept grasses and pocked with flowers. A playground he was beginning to outgrow. A child’s mind full of a child’s cares, no more and no less.

“ALERT: SPIKE DETECTED IN SUBJECT V’S SURFACE TEMPERATURE.”

“Pod,” Griffon rumbled, as he materialized atop one of the wobbly mesh tables snatched from the boulevard. “Not now, buddy.”

The nightmare eagle was watching the weapon just as intently as V was. In spite of the clumsy situation that preceded this one, he offered no quips and no commentary. Nelo Angelo’s sword had no life of its own, but it was realer than any of the demons contracted to V; a nightmare which would exist regardless of whether anyone observed it or not.

V set his cane carefully below the window, and exchanged it for the sword. It was cold. Inert. It could have been any hunk of metal in the world. Unlike the Sparda, the only resistance it offered as he tried to lift it was its physical weight. It wasn’t a devil arm. While it had been hell-forged, it had no soul of its own, and like his nightmares it could only feed on the one who held it.

Faint blue light flickered along its dulled symbols. It was responding to him. _Remembering_ him.

“Disgusting…” He let the edge rest against the floor and held a hand up just beneath Pod 042. “Show me.”

The screen clicked open.

 

**My mother's robes were poppy red.**

**In gray ash, I lose my innocence.**

**My sword and strength protect me among a sea of red.**

**On white streets, I lose my faith.**

**My arrogance brings me before three eyes of red.**

**In black armor, I lose my will.**

**My only treasure, my divine hate, wears our mother’s red.**

**To a silver blade, I lose this foolish life.**

 

V’s breaths deepened. Slowed. There was nowhere for this feeling to go, so he held his ghosts down and dispassionately drowned them.

 _They’re only memories,_ he told himself _._ But that gut reaction—that instinct to put the unbearable out of mind and focus on literally anything else—was Vergil’s. And he wasn’t Vergil.

It did not matter if they were only memories. They were _his_ memories, given words as if from _his_ mouth, put in poetry with _his_ voice, _his_ turns of phrase, as though he had put it there himself when he hadn’t. If such a reading of his heart had ever been penned by his own hand he would never have left such that memoir in this thing—an obscene sword to match the obscene gift of ‘freedom’ from the demon who took his mother, his home, and then in a final insult even took him from himself.

Yet here it was. Bearing his thoughts like whispers gathered from a confessional.  Only someone aware of what this sword meant to him could have given it a name so infinitely insulting it ‘Humility’.

_“Beware, O Proud. Thou shalt be humbled.”_

Griffon twitched. “Uhh…V?”

The sword’s faint cobalt glow surged to hot amethyst. V released it, but it was a mere receptacle for the energy that sweltered inside of him, pushing back the blackened curls of his tattoos and filling their empty paths with pale light. Griffon’s feathers lit the same, and he managed a strangled squawk before he vanished. Blood rushed in V’s ears, but his heart no longer seemed to beat so much as it pulsed. He doubled over, panic and fear pushing through the surge to seek him only be scorched away before it ever reached him.

Blackened talons flared from his fingers. Scales followed; each one a tiny burst of agony like new teeth crowning from his flesh. The faded shadows of his tattoos weaved and swirled between them liked rivers eroding vast mountains. White-violet sparks leaped from his skin.

Though he didn’t understand _how_ , he did understand what was happening to him.

He had to get away from there.

Without a second thought he lifted Nelo Angelo’s sword. His talons were too long and made clumsy work of it, but it weighed almost nothing as he swung it. The brickwork gave way like paper and the window shattered. It might have been pleasant to remember what such power felt like under any other circumstance, but he could already see the scales failing, weakly fighting to spread without meaningful progress. Dizziness made clouds of his thoughts and only the incessant tickle of sweat on every patch of him that still boasted skin kept him grounded in his own body.

Getting to the ground turned out to be more a matter of falling than leaping. In his desperation to escape he had forgotten just how weak the structure was, and the ancient wood yielded beneath him as he limped toward the threshold, spilling him down onto the first floor.

Unstable violet magic surged from his body in dancing lines of plasma that licked the rotted planks and set them alight. His scales and claws snapped out of existence as though they were never there to begin with, the pain of their retreat enough to draw a cry from him where their emergence had failed.

As he thought. Devil trigger was too much for his body to take.

He dragged himself through the empty ground floor window and threw himself to the cobblestones as smoke began to rise. The glass cut him, but drew no blood. He was a mere construct again, crumbling and on the verge of death after using power far too great for him. Yet even as he stared at his fingers in a daze, the cracks slowly closed. Blood began to ooze from wounds where pieces of him had simply broken off. Skin that was smooth and supple and human replaced the flaking dust.

A heave from deep in his gut forced him up into a feverish stumble. He found his way into an alley on the opposite side of the boulevard and clutched at the brick, bent and shuddering as his stomach emptied. Blood and salt spilled onto the stone, all pink-stained crystals and dark red fluid.

The maso. The gods. They still—

He collapsed. For the first time in days he felt the chill of the on-going winter. The permeating heat had gone, and it was all he could do to lay shivering on the ground like a newborn.

A coat settled over him. It stank of smoke, but it was his. He squinted up through bleary vision and saw Pod 042 hovering close at his side. 9S shouldn’t know. 9S _couldn’t_ know. But V could not force the words from his mouth.

His mind was full of sunlight. He stood at the top of the hill, at the playground where he would go. Poppy red robes swayed at his side. A bracelet peeked from a black sleeve, on her right. Always on her right.

Through a mouth clogged with the taste of brine and iron, he croaked. “Mo…ther…”

On the other side of the boulevard, the house burned.

* * *

 

_Report on Unit 10H and the Moon Server, compiled by Pod 042:_

_The Moon Server on the surface of the moon was an unmanned base constructed around a pre-existing server containing the remnants of the human genome from the Gestalt Project. Android compiled any and all additional data regarding mankind in this base._

_This structure became the basis of the Council of Humanity. The broadcasts only ever existed to convince androids that Humanity had survived in secret._

_During YoRHa’s active period, the server was assigned a special pod to maintain the remnants of humanity’s data. It was also assigned a single YoRHa android to manage the facility: Number 10, Healer Type. Unit 10H._

**_Note: Due to risk of drawing the attention of the Wide-range Pod Network, status of Unit 10H was not confirmed despite Subject V's request. All related entries were subsequently sealed._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can't just go around absorbing strange particles and expect everything to turn out fine.


	43. Snow and Ash - Side B

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 156: 9S gets an unexpected call from Anemone and finds V under unsettling circumstances.

Despite all his reading on the nature of demons and devils, it had never really clicked for 9S that Hell was a real place. Not until Masamune ominously warned that the Humility was only meant to be used by a demon.  

It wasn’t new information—the weapon description said exactly who the sword belonged to and where it had been made. He’d always sort of taken the old world weapon’s descriptors for granted. Some of them were so strange and cruel that they couldn’t possibly be anything but ancient fables. Humility’s description was literal, if Griffon’s reaction was anything to go by, and 9S turned that thought over a dozen times between the forest kingdom and the amusement park.

V’s family hunted demons. If it was a demon’s weapon, it had to have been a demon he knew, or had fought before. The Black Angel had to be an enemy of his. Maybe even the one that had killed his mother. There was no other explanation for how his demeanor had changed since discovering it. The man he’d come to understand as dry and exasperatingly composed whenever he wasn’t busy being smug suddenly had more in common with a barely restrained boar.

The two lines of data he knew from his initial interactions with Humility pulled at his attention like a bad joint drawing the absent touch of a hand. Android-made weapons acted as data storage in the more traditional sense. Logs, protocols, reports—things like that. Old world weapons told stories and held thoughts, usually related to the weapon’s wielders. Usually, as in not always. Subject Yonah was known to have been sickly. It was safe to assume she hadn’t been the one using that old Iron Pipe even though it was full of her thoughts.

It all made sense if he just stopped picking at how strange it was for V’s mother and the fire to be the very first subject.

What else was in there? What story was the sword trying to tell? V’s search for some kind of clue that had begun on the sinking coast nearly six months ago had finally turned something up, and everything about it from the data to the way it supposedly fell out of the sky fascinated 9S. If he just took a little peek at the rest of the data…

No. It wasn’t some stray data out in the middle of nowhere. Those were V’s memories.

He took the stairs two at a time, and caught V struggling to pull his fingers through his hair. “It’s getting long, huh?”

V turned and scrutinized him without answering. He liked to pace when he was thinking—9S had watched him do it for hours and had every whimsical step and idle cane trick memorized. But he was still as a statue, all of his carelessly flowing actions bound tight.

“You don’t have to eye me like that,” said 9S. “I got the sword, just like I said.”

“Quite overdue.”

9S squinted. He knew this game. “I _did_ offer to stay until it was done.”

“I may have taken you up on it if I knew you’d end up making a sabbatical of it. How fortunate that the god you found was rather more benevolent.” Some of the tension faded, enough for V to lean onto his cane and smile in his quietly satisfied way. “It’s good to see you well.”

9S beamed.

V had said once that he would take steps to repair 9S if it came to that. It was a long time ago. 9S understood perfectly well that V’s concerns at the time were different—strictly about keeping him in a useful state. However much V might insist otherwise, that had changed. Losing or damaging his trust was a way worse prospect than not knowing what was on the sword.

Humility materialized in a brief pop of sparks, weighing heavily on his hands. “I checked to be sure the data was all unlocked properly, but I didn’t read any of it.”

What little their interaction had done to loosen V was snatched back into crossed arms and rigid posture. His jacket was off—not too strange, he was always quick to describe how stuffy it was—but fresh sweat was beading on his skin. If 9S had stepped forward, V might have taken a step back.

“I appreciate your discretion.” He made a stiff gesture at the wall. “Leave it there. Though I hate to cut our meeting short, I think it would be best if I held my reunion with this sword in private.”

“Sure,” said 9S, gladly setting it aside. Unconsciously he rubbed his hands against his coat. If V was afraid of it, maybe he shouldn’t be so casual about touching it either.

“I’ll go get some supplies.” He ambled toward the door, peeking mischievously back. “You’re probably sick of having to do it yourself.” V didn’t answer, but he did smile and run his fingers through his hair again. It really was getting long. “Do you want me to just cut that?”

The creases vanished from V’s forehead, his eyebrows rising. “You’ll forgive me if I doubt that you can do so to any worthwhile effect.”

“Just this once, I’ll give you that.” He grinned and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Scanners were the only male models, and not that many of us were made. There was kind of a lot of incentive for us to master our own nonessential care routines.”

And each other’s for that matter. Most androids were particular about their appearance, but he was far from the only scanner with harmless grooming quirks. They all took care of each other, if they couldn’t take care of themselves. Not something V _needed_ exactly, but the least 9S wanted to do was the favor of giving V one less thing to think about. He would properly thank V for coming to get him, of course, but it felt like now wasn’t the best time.

“Come on,” he said. “My memory’s basically one long recording. I can make it look just like it did when you got here.”

“How do you propose to—”

9S was way ahead of him, producing a small pair of scissors he’d been gifted by one of the clown machines.

V was giving him the same exasperated look as when he’d first learned the pods could fish. “And you have scissors because…?”

He smugly jabbed them toward V’s coat. “Did you think I just hacked up a bunch of leather with my sword or something?”

As soon as V gave his wordless agreement, he hurried to get on task before he changed his mind. There was a brief moment of a very different kind of tension when he approached—a subtle jerk that 9S recognized as an aborted defensive maneuver. V could be finicky about personal space; was he not used to people being behind him?

He’d make it quick, then. Just a few minor calculations to maximize his efficiency and the process was practically automatic. Making it look the same as before was nothing compared to the things the other scanners used to ask for. 801S had the longest hair among scanners and insisted on a hundred brush strokes every 24 hour cycle, 32S liked his hair trimmed to some weirdly precise measurement and always looked like dandelion puff, 4S liked to dye his hair even though he was constantly getting in trouble for it; there was even a time when 1S became popular because he would only do his hair with combs he hand-carved on Earth and it caught on with other models. 

It dawned on him that they had also probably been assigned E units at some point.

“Done,” he said, glad to have a reason to not think about that. And not a bad job, at that. “Sorry if I spooked you at the start. I didn’t think you’d be uncomfortable.”

“Neither did I.” V brushed himself off and pushed his hair back a third time. “I don’t have much experience with this sort of thing.”

9S slowly crossed his arms. How could he not have much experience with something like a haircut? It grew just fine, so someone had to have cut it before. If not his parents, then at least his brother. And he had a son…

“You never cut Nero’s hair?”

The cane struck the floor with a heavy clang.

9S’s eyes widened and he felt his mouth opening and closing uselessly. He messed up. He _really_ messed up. It was more than the dazed look in V’s wide eyes or the way his fingers twitched over his necklace, or even the flush of red that engulfed his cheeks.

It was the way he broke eye contact first. How his gaze floated up as if pulled by magnetism to 9S’ hair and lingered there.

“I only ever saw Nero with his hair short.”

A shock of cold went through 9S. What did that mean? What had happened to Nero? He had only ever said that he had a son, but that it was complicated, and he was suddenly ravenous to know. But he was pinned like a bug by that look. V saw Nero in him. He also saw the ways 9S _wasn’t_ Nero.

V didn’t look at him as he retrieved his cane, or as he stood. His voice was low and careful. “You should go.”

Even now, he thought of V’s white hair atop the cliff and his body felt so light. 

“I know the coat makes you sweat, but it’s supposed to snow. So…” He swallowed. He had no right to be hurt. It made a hypocrite of him.  “Take care.”

* * *

There was a human saying that ‘you couldn’t go home again’ that 9S had never managed to parse, but he thought he got the principle of it now.

The empty office building was barren as ever, but there were still traces that they had been there for most of autumn. A smear of ash here and withered clover there, and a faint nostalgia all throughout. True, he didn’t want to go back to V immediately after running his errands, but he couldn’t have explained why he had come back here of all places or why he was content to stare out the window at the cloud-muted ruins.

Boring and long as the days were, maybe he just missed when nothing was happening.

“INCOMING RESISTANCE TRANSMISSION,” Pod announced.

9S rolled his eyes, and sighed dramatically as it picked up. “I’m _fine_ , Pine. Still have all my scanner parts attached and everything.”

An unexpectedly gentle laugh answered. “Glad to hear it, 9S.”

“Oh, A-Anemone!” He stood upright. “Sorry, Pine’s repair routines were really exhaustive, and I thought—never mind that; did you need something? A favor?”

“No. The dig turned something up. I’d like you to swing by the camp.” She hesitated. Her voice was matter of fact, but compassionate. “I think you’re the most qualified to decide what happens to it.”

The transmission ended.  The camp wasn’t far, and his body moved on auto-pilot to get there. Light as ever in spite of how his thoughts had all turned to solid lead. He knew it had to be YoRHa-related. He didn’t want to think about how, or exactly what he was about to be faced with.

When he walked into the camp, his mind was blank and braced. Anemone stood dead center in the middle of the site, awaiting him with crossed arms.

9S had never thought anything of the patch of flowers in the center of the resistance camp. They were tended and enclosed, in the sort of haphazard way that suggested a lack of time and resources. There wouldn’t have been any flowers in bloom at this time of year anyway, but the absence of them combined with Anemone’s unusual position drew his eye. 

The dirt was freshly turned. A single withered rose lay faded but unmissable atop the dark brown soil. 

A grave.

His pulse began to rise. He tried to smile. “The suspense is killing me.”

Her face pinched. From the folds of her moss-colored cloak, she produced a sword.

The steel reflected his face on an edge that glimmered such a pure silver-white that 9S fleetingly doubted his memories. It seemed beyond belief that such an immaculate sword could never have been stained by blood—if only some of that blood had not been _his_. That blade had taken everything from him. His life, his memories. Time and time again. 

"That's... 2B's sword..."

Anemone nodded, and held it out to him, no differently than he had held Humility out only a little while ago. Painful longing and world dimming fear warred for supremacy, charging up and down his nerve sensors until his breath stopped and he went numb inside his own body.

He took it. Not because he wanted it, but because Anemone was right. Whatever he did with it, Virtuous Contract didn’t belong with anyone in this world more than it belonged with him.

His gaze fell back to the grave, and he held the sword closer to his chest. "That's where she's buried, isn't it?"

"A2's body was never found during tower clean up."

They weren’t even half-way done, but her tone was a flat and emotionless and fully conveyed that she expected him to repeat that lie to anyone who asked for as long as he lived. He had a sneaking suspicion she probably knew he was to blame for the similar disappearance of the twins. It didn't matter. A2 didn't mean anything to him anymore. If Anemone cared enough to make a grave for her, he wouldn’t disturb it.

“Understood.”

She nodded, and with an unusually hesitant hand, reached out to squeeze his shoulder. Without a word, she left him standing there, and without a word he drifted back out the way he came. Snow was beginning to fall in fluffy, feathery clumps. Puffs of steam rose as he stood there, his mind blank not for careful emptiness but for a flood of thoughts that had all blended together into static.

It would have been the simplest thing to let the NFCS activate and take care of the sword’s transport, but even when Pod 153 broke the silence to suggest it, he only held it tighter. He didn’t want it out of his sight or out of his hands for even a second, nor did he want to be able to interface with it at all. Whatever memories or thoughts were on it, he wasn’t ready to know. To even imagine.

“Submit a private-channel inquiry to Pod 042,” he said dimly. “I’ll find…something to do if V’s not done.”

Her antennae receded, and a series of tinny clicks rebounded inside her case. A brief silence followed, and the pattern repeated.

“…CONNECTION FAILED.”

9S looked up at her, dumbfounded. “What?”

“THIS POD COULD NOT ESTABLISH A CONNECTION TO TACTICAL SUPPORT UNIT POD 042.”

The static snowing through his mind parted. The private channel was for pod-to-pod communication only. Nobody used it but them. And he was the only in the zone with active pods.

The pulse of his blackbox increased. “Put Pod 042’s current location on the map.”

“…NEGATIVE. POD 042 IS OFFLINE.”

He ran.

Through the stream, over the frozen earth, and onto the broken road, turning the corner and deftly activating pod’s bomb program on the barrier between the city and the park. Wood and sheet metal and barbed wires scattered, and he crashed through, not even slowing down as flying shrapnel scratched him open in a dozen places.

A crowd of the park’s machines huddled around the golden rabbit statue, staring at the murky smoke rising from southwestern quarter and the smoldering glow flickering off the ferris wheel. He pushed through them, racing down the thoroughfares and through the alleys until the snow blackened with ash and eventually began to fall as filthy rain.

The room he had left V in had already collapsed. The fire had taken all it could and moved on, leaving a charred husk filled with dying cinders in favor of devouring the rest of the avenue. Broken glass littered the cobblestones. V’s cane was lying among it, its owner nowhere to be seen. 9S could not even bend to pick it up. There was too much noise, too much chaos—flying machines screaming in their metallic voices as they tried to put out the fire before it had the chance to hop the canal and destroy another quadrant of the park. The fire roaring on, virtuous contract cutting into his fingers as he gripped the unguarded blade too tightly.

He was too late. Just like he had been for 2B.

“ _Stop it_ ,” he hissed at himself, and snatched the cane up. Proximity to the fire had left it hot to the touch, but it had not been scorched. Meaning it had been outside before the fire did its worst. V did not leave his cane anywhere, and Pod 042 would not have left V. They had to have made it out.

9S wasn’t going to believe anything else until he saw a body.

“Find something,” he commanded. He was speaking more to himself than to Pod 153, but she responded.

“AFFIRMATIVE. TRACE SIGNATURE OF LOCAL ELECTROMAGNETIC ACTIVITY IDENTIFIED. MARKING LOCATION.”

The roller coaster platform.

He took several shortcuts, bowling through boarded up windows and rotted doors wherever he could. Pod did not issue him any warnings about his body or the dubious structural integrity of the buildings. They both knew he would not have listened.

The first thing to catch his eye when he clambered over the pile of debris was the mattress. Stark white, sitting dead center in the courtyard. Pod 042 was toppled over beside it, his claws frozen as if in rigor mortis. His antennae did not flash, and there was no faint whine of his emergency signal.

9S paced rapidly around him, looking around for any sign of V. “If he can be re-activated, do it.”

“REPORT: SYSTEM FAILURE DUE TO ELECTROMAGNETIC DISRUPTION. REBOOTING…”

In only a few maddening seconds of silence, Pod 042 jerked sluggishly back to life. 9S had a dozen questions, but none of them were more important than the immediate one.

“Where’s V?”

“UNKNOWN. THIS POOO—D-D-D” His voice slurred to a syrupy growl and he lost a bit of his altitude. His case clicked open and shut, like a beetle settling its wings and his antennae spun. “THIS POD ATTEMPTED RELOCATION DUE TO THE SPREAD OF THE FIRE. SUBJECT V WAS INCAPACITATED DUE TO AN UNKNOWN REACTION FROM HUMILITY.”

That explained the mattress. Without an interface Pod would have had to physically lift V, but with such small pincers he may as well have tried to lift him with tweezers. “Did Griffon not help you?”

“NEGATIVE. SUPPORT UNIT GRIFFON WAS NON-RESPONSIVE.”

9S’s gut wrenched. Whether V slept or passed out or was sick, Griffon was always there to protect him. Their lives were bound, he _had_ to. The world spun. His breaths heaved in quick bursts, even as his jaws clenched tight enough to make his teeth groan and creak

“Where did the EMP come from?” he rumbled. His grip tightened around 2B’s sword in one fist and V’s cane in the other. Either would do. “A machine? An android?”

The two pods turned toward one another. They had the audacity to have a compressed conversation right in front of him, and he bit his lip until it split to keep himself contained. Maybe they were just trying to think fast. Think him out of this dead end where again he was alone and the place he thought he could be at ease was burned and the person he cared for was ~~dead~~ gone.

They had to know as well as he did that he couldn’t go through this again.

A notification pinged on his interface. A map marker, way out on the edge of the park where it touched the coast. He didn’t know his way there, but the roller coaster made a nice high point to jump from and skip the run.

He landed on a stretch of broken down concrete piers worn to sea-smoothed stones by the tide. A few wilted balloons sagged from the remains of metal posts, but there was no evidence of machine presence. There was no evidence of _any_ presence. Just a rundown shack peeking out from beneath the skeletal frame of the coaster’s tracks.

Nowhere along the spectrum between the very best and very worst his imagination had to offer would have come even close to preparing him to open that door. For a moment he was so caught up in the weirdness of the scene he failed to absorb that he had found what he was looking for.

V’s hair was white. All of his tattoos were faded to the color of pale ash. 9S dropped down, the sword and cane dropping out of his grasp as he shook V furiously. “V? V, are you alright?!”

V groaned and pushed ineffectually at 9S’ face. “ **Stop**. My head…”

“Sorry, sorry, just—” He heaved a long, shuddering sigh, like an engine finally releasing its steam, and hugged V without thinking. “I’m glad you’re okay…”

V didn’t freeze up, and didn’t immediately push him away. When he did, 9S could feel how little strength he had, but his eyes were wary and sharp. “Were you not the one who brought me here?”

9S slowly shook his head. He kept close as they both took in the unsettling eccentricities of the shack.

V was sprawled out on an entire pile of pelts and pillows, his coat and three more like it layered over him like blankets. A dozen oranges were arranged in a perfect circle around him. They were also scattered on every single one of the pieces of furniture that had been carefully arranged to look like a normal human living room. 9S could tell some had started to go bad by the sweetly rotten scent that filled his head every time he breathed.

“I think we should go…” he whispered.

“I don’t think it matters whether or not we go,” said V. He rose to his feet, leaning heavily on 9S and his cane as he faltered toward a glass bowl carefully filled with a pyramid of oranges. At the peak of the citrusy altar, something glittered. A gold, diamond-shaped object with very realistic relief of some kind of animal eye in it. V picked it up, his expression harsh in the half-light.

9S’ eyes moved frantically between it and V. “What is that?”

“Like me, a thing that should not be here,” he said raggedly. He crushed it in his hand, and the color came back to both his tattoos and his hair in a swell of violet energy. He stood tall and straight, his expression dour and imperious as he rolled his shoulders. His voice came back as smooth and composed as it had ever been. “The one who brought me here knows I am not an android.”

“I know.” V raised a brow at him. “They used an EMP on Pod 042 before they carried you off. If they thought you were an android, and the goal was to keep you safe…”

“They would not have risked it,” V completed. He looked darkly amused by the situation. In the same way he had before he’d summoned Nightmare on the dinosaur machine. “I am curious…How did you find me?”

9S looked to the pods, and V followed his gaze. Both were quiet. “V asked a question.”

The pods turned to one another in silent communication and turned back. In perfect unison, they answered:

“REPORT: A BLACK BOX SIGNAL WAS DETECTED IN THIS AREA.”


	44. [D]ream's End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 158: 9S struggles to cope as he finds himself in a new cycle of secrets and things that should have stayed buried.

Soot clung to the underbellies of the clouds, coloring them drab, ominous grays that would have fit an oncoming summer thunderstorm.  The burned brick, soaked by snowfall and canal water, was just as bleak. After exposure to so many harsh elements, the charred, soggy innards of their winter hideaway were almost unrecognizable.

In the heat of the moment, when he didn’t know where V was or if he was even still alive, it had felt so much like seeing the Bunker go down again. Now that the panic had passed, 9S found he was mostly annoyed with the loss of the hard day’s work it had taken to clean the place out.

“You okay in there?” he called.

Griffon shouted something foul back, so yes, he was fine.

At the outer edge of 9S’ visual field, V stared at the husk of the building without seeing it. His fingers drummed at his cane, but his expression was turned inward. He had been like that ever since he awakened. Locked up in his own head.  9S couldn’t decide if it was Humility that preoccupied him or being abducted and taken to that creepy shack on the pier.

Without thinking, he reached out and grasped tightly at the side of V’s coat.

The drumming of V’s fingers paused. “I’m alright, 9S.”

“Are you?” He cocked his head and peered at V’s face. “You slept a long time again.”

“To the contrary, I slept a very short time given the magnitude of what occurred.”

“Yeah, well, you haven’t really filled me in on that part,” 9S said sourly.

V’s eyes dropped down to briefly meet his and slid to the white katana 9S still clutched in his arms. “My magic was siphoned away.” Without lingering on it, he returned his gaze forward. “Human blood is a source of power for the infernal. Let us say the sword was much better at digesting me than the gods were.”

9S grimaced and rubbed at his arm. It was easier to get the response than he expected, and now he wished he hadn’t asked. “You really don’t know how to talk about things that nearly kill you without making a joke of it do you?”

V smirked. “The fool is always made evident in the moment of my survival.”

From above, Griffon barked. “Any other time I’d be with you, V, but I’m not real fond of the whole bit where you were on your last legs!” He flew down with Humility in his claws, and V took it gingerly. “Try not to burn the place down again.”

A faint glow filtered through the symbols engraved in the metal, in the same lilac color as V’s magic. Nothing happened, and it quickly subsided. Maybe it was…full.

Despite his claim that the sword had essentially tried to drink him and even his light-fingered touch on the handle, V’s expression was preoccupied again. There was a lot that he wasn’t saying about what happened after 9S left, and Humility’s data would undoubtedly have filled in all the blanks. But V had forbidden him from touching it. It would be even more of a betrayal of V’s trust now than before.

9S stole another sidelong glance at V and rubbed his thumb against the ornate black sword collar of 2B’s katana. V hadn’t asked him about it, and 9S hadn’t volunteered anything. In his mind, and maybe more importantly in his heart, he knew that Humility and Virtuous Contract were equals. Weapons with heavy histories that were hard to face, and would probably be even harder to share. But he hoped it didn’t last. It was one thing for them to be private, and another entirely for both of them to be hiding things in plain sight.

“INCOMING RESISTANCE TRANSMISSION,” said Pod 153.

9S rubbed at his face and darted into a nearby alley. “Yeah?”

“Geez, what moose pissed in your boots?”

Jackass. Possibly the person he wanted to talk to least in the world. He sighed. Cheery wasn’t viable right now, but he could manage neutral at least. “It’s nothing. Do you need something?”

“Yeah, I’d like you to meet me on top of the old goliath. I wanna pick your brain about something.”

His eyes dropped as he tried to think of something he could say that would get him out of going. Another weird science experiment was the last thing he needed. Right now, all he wanted was to stay with V. 

His eyes fell on something on the ground. A pile of white grains with an unusual ruddy residue that looked like rust. Momentarily forgetting the transmission, he bent down and pinched a bit between his fingers. The rusty stuff flaked over his gloves. He had never seen any this fine but the structure of the crystals almost looked like—

His throat tightened.

“9S, you there?”

“Yes!” He quickly rubbed his fingers off and whipped his head over his shoulder to make sure V hadn’t seen him. “I’m here. I’m on my way. I’ll be there soon. Bye!”

The transmission ended and 9S pressed himself back against the brickwork. His breaths oscillated wildly between breathing too quickly and not breathing at all.

Salt.

Salt and dried blood and he didn’t need to think to know that both had come from V. Why now? It had been months! Humility—Humility drained V’s blood or magic or whatever and maybe it really was magic that had allowed V to beat white chlorination, only he was never actually cured. It was still there the whole time. He was still sick; of course the gods didn’t need to call him when they were in the forest kingdom, they still _had_ him.

Worse, there was a strong possibility V didn’t know. He showed no sign of concern about bringing 9S near the alley and hadn’t reacted to 9S ducking into it. Human memory was terrible. If he was so delirious after what Humility did to him that he thought 9S was the one who carried him to the shack, it wasn’t far fetched that he might not remember whatever led to this.

With a deep breath, he rounded the corner. Humility dangled in V’s hand like a second, much more unwieldy cane. 9S tried not to wince. “So, what’s your plan for that thing now? You gonna…carry it with you?”

“I could not hope to even if I did not loathe it,” said V, with a puzzled look. “I will find a place for it where it will not be disturbed. When I do, that is where it will stay.”

“Great!” 9S cleared his throat and tried again with a little more volume control. This was bad. Everything kept happening so damn fast, one thing after another, his self-regulation was starting to fail. “Really, that’s great, I just—worry. About you.”

“I had noticed.” He pulled himself out of his own thoughts long enough to actually look at 9S and not just through him. “Are _you_ alright?”

A tattered and weary laugh fluttered up from his chest like an escaped moth. “Not at all. I thought I lost you again. But it’s fine—you’re fine. I’ll be fine.” He took another deep breath. He was usually so good at keeping a lid on things, but he really couldn’t tell where he was in the situation anymore. He was glad that V was alive but everything else around that one kernel of fantastic news was chaos.

He hadn’t even begun to unpack the matter of the surviving YoRHa android. Whoever they were, they had made a conscious decision to bail out of the pods’ detection range. That said Scanner to him, and every time he had to curb his own hopes. If it was 4S, he wouldn’t have avoided 9S. There was no data, so who knew what kind of model it was? Another goddamn thing he had to think about.

“Jackass called and I want to see what she’s got.” He looked uncertainly up and down the open street. “I know you don’t like it when I worry, but… Is there somewhere you can go that’s safe?”

“Re-capture would be a difficult prospect with me awake, but if you insist.” V glanced over the skyline of the park and pointed his cane at the ferris wheel. “There. High ground.”

9S uncoiled, just enough for a deep sigh that wasn’t nearly as much of a relief as he wanted it to be. “Ok... I’ll be back soon.”

* * *

_“ SUBJECT V,” said Pod 042. “THIS POD WISHES TO INITIATE A PRIVATE CONVERSATION.”_

_“Glad to hear it,” said V. “I was going to suggest the same.”_

* * *

9S hadn’t paid much attention to the contents of the crater recently. Most of the snow that had fallen over the long winter was perfectly preserved atop the towerfall, and the already harsh whiteness of every surface was amplified to innumerable eye-watering needles of icy light when the sun shone. The only sanctuary was the shadow of the cavernous entrance where the pillar of memory alloy peeked out. They hadn’t moved much of the surface towerfall since they dug that out, but 9S was willing to bet they had tunneled deep into the underlying piles like ants if they managed to find 2B’s sword.

Jackass eyed the way he carried it, but if there was one thing she was good at (aside from unscrupulous science and blowing things up) it was minding her business. She chucked him a rough white stone, little bigger than his palm.

“Scan that for me, will ya?”

9S squinted. The physical composition was an exact match for memory alloy. It only took a cursory glance at her expression to let him know she’d do something unsavory to him if he pointed that out. He leaned back against one of Engels’ cold exhaust pipes with a resigned huff and flicked open his readouts.

Everything came back exactly the way he expected. It was memory alloy alright. Highly pure memory alloy, granted, but that wasn’t anything strange since it came from such a massive deposit.

“There’s some evidence of a data framework,” he murmured distractedly.

Jackass gave an equally distracted grunt. She was fiddling with something she had clearly cobbled together from pod parts. Griffon had mentioned she made a weapon from one, but this one looked more like a radio of some kind. She had grafted three additional antennae onto it.

“Can you hack it?”

“Huh?” He almost laughed, but the data was clearly there. It wasn’t the weirdest idea—an intriguing one actually, once he really gave it his full attention. “Memory alloy is a major component in the physical assembly of a memory core, so in theory it could hold information in android-compatible framework… But that doesn’t mean I don’t need at least a basic interface to access it.”

“Like…” She twisted a dial and flicked a switch. “This?”

There was a familiar tug on his senses, but his external interfaces remained stable. No aural disturbance. Amazing. She had taken his report about Beepy and generated a local frequency on a different channel that didn’t make him hallucinate.

He could feel the memory alloy resonating in his hand. When he tried to activate his hacking protocols, the golden halo answered immediately. With no resistance at all, he found himself in hacking space.

He snapped out of it just as quickly. With a strangled scream, he snatched his hand away from the stone and sent it tumbling across the metal grates.

“It's—I thought A2 destroyed that!”  

Jackass tucked her creation under her arm. “She probably did.”

“Then what is that?!”

“Well. If those red bastards were trying to make machines evolve, one of them probably decided the whole ‘die and come back on default’ bit was less than ideal.” She bent to scoop the stone up and held it up to the light. “Maybe picked up on the whole back up data thing from YoRHa. None of the machines who’ve gone near it have had any reaction, and you seem alright after hacking the thing so I don’t think it’s actually active, but there it is.”

She looked down into the crate at the pillar with something that might have been hatred or excitement. It was unnervingly difficult to tell. “A copy of the whole fucking network.”

9S felt light-headed. Six months of almost total peace and suddenly everything was all going to shit in the space of a few days.

“Clearly the next step is looking at more than this little chunk,” Jackass gushed. “I imagine you’re raring to know what’s in there.”

“Your imagination’s wrong.” The tart and openly confrontational tone of his own voice didn’t escape him, and he didn’t yield to Jackass’ dangerously impassive stare. Who cared if it wasn’t active? It was the network, and it wasn’t supposed to exist. “I don’t want anything to do with this.”

“That’s some attitude for you to take after you’ve been using our resources left and right.”

“I gave you access to everything I found in exchange for repairs. I do favors when I want something from Anemone. We’re even.”

“Are we? After you hacked the transporter in the western sector steal yourself an arm that is conspicuously new compared to the rest of you?” She crossed her arms. “And the rest of a body you probably stashed somewhere.”

His lips pressed thin and he scowled. “…I didn’t have a choice.”

“Spare me. I’d have done the same in your shoes; otherwise I’d have taken it out of your ass a long time ago. I’ve known for months. If you don’t wanna help, fine. But I believe there’s data on the network somewhere about YoRHa’s creators, and you know I’m willing to hunt down that spare body and crack its head open like a coconut to get scanner tech if you don’t want to offer yours.”

Every surface senor across his arms and neck tingled. He hadn’t seen the dormant model of himself in a long time now, but a familiar spark of possessiveness sizzled within his black box. “What is wrong with you?! Why don’t you just have the thing spit out some scanner parts if you’re so in need?”

Standing in the desert and letting the sandstorm wear at him for a month would have been less harsh than the look of withering disappointment she gave him. “You really are naïve if you don’t realize how damn extraordinary that little parlor trick of yours was.”

Not stupid, he noted. Despite that scathing look that had brusquely halved his ego, he was only _naïve_.

About what, he wondered.

“Look,” she said with an irritated sigh. “I don’t give a shit about your weird attachment to a bunch of spare parts with your face on it. But I don’t want Theta sniffing around if I show up in camp with a whole 9S model from nowhere, and you don’t want that either. So I‘ll do my best to leave your spare parts out of this. With any luck, I’ll turn up a scanner corpse that isn’t as fried all to hell from the logic virus like all the B models are.”

9S felt his admiration for Jackass beginning to sour. The way she spoke and the way she was just casually tinkering with their corpses… He had no doubt she would just build whatever she needed if left to her own devices, up to an including a whole new scanner. She had made it very clear she didn’t value thought or emotion in things that were made to be tools before she made the E-drug.

And yet as atrocious as that was, he got the impression she preferred it to using his spare body. The option that would have been easier, faster, and less demanding was not her ideal. Because of Theta.

Jackass’ choice of term had nothing to do with intellect. Naivete was about being uninformed and unaware. They both knew 9S was too smart for his own good—smart enough to know Theta and Jackass were engaged in quiet, cold war but ignorant of the cause.

His voice lowered. “Why is she so interested in me?”

“You have something she wants.” There again that sudden twitchiness—her fingers rubbing against the modified pod and heel tapping at the ground even as she scowled off toward the camp. “Hell if I know what, though.”

* * *

_“You didn’t tell him.”_

_“ NEGATIVE.” _

_“And I suppose you have your reasons for that?”_

_“ THE SENSITIVE NATURE OF HUMILITY’S DATA AND THE SUBSEQUENT TRANSFORMATION COULD CAUSE FRICTION IN 9S AND V’S RELATIONSHIP. QUERY: WAS THIS NOT THE REASON V SENT UNIT 9S AWAY BEFORE MAKING CONTACT WITH THE WEAPON?”_

* * *

At the bottom of the Engels, 9S stared down into the pit. The whole machine network was right there, crystallized in a pillar of memory alloy and Jackass wanted to study it. His fists clenched, but he supposed it could be worse. Jackass wouldn’t hesitate to blow the damn thing up if it posed a threat, and somehow he had gotten away with his transporter antics.

He was going to have to move that spare body somewhere else, but not now. Checking on it right then would’ve been a good way to get tracked.

“Put Pod 042’s location on the map.” Silence. A faint series of repeating clicks. “Pod—?!“

“POD 042 IS ONLINE,” she reassured. The map pinged. “REPORT: DELAY DUE TO POD 042 OPERATING ON PRIVATE CHANNEL. CITED REASON WAS CONCERN THAT THE SURVIVING YORHA MODEL MAY HAVE AN ACTIVE SUPPORT UNIT ALLOWING POD 042’S POSITION TO BE TRACKED.”

“Oh…” He pressed a hand to his chest, and let his shoulders sag. “That’s… a good idea. You might want to also operate on the private channel until we get that resolved.”

“AFFIRMATIVE.”

9S made it back to the amusement park and peered up at the ferris wheel. Griffon was resting atop one of the more intact carriages nearer the top.

Now was one of those times 9S envied Griffon’s utility when it came to vertical climbs.  V got to fly quickly and comfortably up there, but it took 9S the better part of twenty minutes at a cautious pace along the steep incline of the old beams. When he finally swung in, he practically collapsed across from V.

Humility was gone, and that was the first bit of genuine relief he’d tasted in hours. He funneled it into sagging deeper into the uncomfortable seats.

“What did you end up doing with it?” he asked.

V didn’t answer. 9S’ entrance had not disturbed him at all, and he remained as he was, staring out at the gray-blue sea with his hands clasped in front of him, over his cane. His eyes were hidden behind the length of his hair that always fell forward on his right. 9S suspected this was intentional. The silence between them wasn’t the easy peace that he had long grown comfortable with. V’s fingers did not drum. The aura of confident ease he always had was absent, subdued until his presence felt as muted as the building clouds.

This was a stillness 9S found all too familiar.

Withheld information cluttered the air between them, turning it to a sea of static without depth or measurable distance. It should have been nothing to dispel it. Their game was long over, but time had proven if he offered something he held close, V would respond in kind out of his own weird sense of fairness. But despite his conspicuous hold on it, he couldn’t bring himself to discuss Virtuous Contract.

Maybe V already knew what the sword was. Maybe Pod told him who used to own it and that was why he had so noticeably avoided asking, but Pod would not have told him everything. To talk about 2E and explain the snarl of his feelings for her meant baring her to V’s judgement. Irrational as it was, the idea that V might come to hate 2B put made his black box feel like a glacial brick ready to drop into his stomach. Explaining how important she was to him was as terrifying a precipice to stand on as explaining the depths of self-destruction and cruelty he fell to after losing her.

Would V even look at him the same way if he knew?

“What did Jackass have for you?” V asked quietly.

Any relief at having a convenient way to break the silence was immediately arrested by how little he wanted to think about that new, highly undesirable turn of events. But it was fine. Not his responsibility. “That big memory alloy the resistance camp found. It’s a backup of the machine network. She wanted me to help her scan it for more information about YoRHa, but I turned her down.”

“Is there no chance that something of value might be on it?”

“Maybe… But I have more important things to do. Like figure out how to find this other YoRHa unit.”

“That will be unnecessary.” V turned his head with careful precision. His eyes were dark and nearly hidden beneath his lashes. “They will find me, when I return to the shack.”

9S’ breaths shook. A crooked smile tilted his mouth, even as he shook his head. “No. You can’t do that.”

“You mistook my statement of intent for an invitation to negotiate. I’m sure you’ll get it, if you play it once more in that perfect memory you boast.”

The words arranged in the shape of their familiar teasing, but they were empty and flat. They lacked the little things that really made them V’s words, from the rhythmic cadence of his delivery to the tongue-in-cheek arrogance.

“I’m going with you.”

“I assure you my singular tense was intentional. I’m going alone.”

He struggled to sit up properly, his limbs shaking the moment he tried to rest his weight on them. “They kidnapped you.”

“That would imply I resisted or had somewhere to be. I was unconscious, exposed to the elements, a fire was spreading, and Pod was dragging my body through the streets. The place I was taken to was warm and safe.”

“ _Safe_?” His tone was just a little too loud. Pulse too quick in his ears. His breath oscillated at random between hyperventilation and forgetting to breath at all. “You call waking up in the middle of nowhere surrounded by oranges safe? They’ve been _stalking_ you. They’re crazy!”

“Have you forgotten the conditions of your own first impression?” V said, with just the barest undercurrent of smug amusement. He turned one of his hands, raising a finger for each of his points. “You followed me to the top of a skyscraper despite lacking an arm, nearly combusted when you discovered my nature, steered me away from the resistance camp… As I remember it, you even suggested it might be a good idea to kill any other androids who approached me.”

He jumped to his feet and snarled. “It’s not the same!”

V stared at him. “Because it isn’t you?”

9S’ breath hitched. He stumbled backward and fell into the seat. Virtuous Contract bit into his already too tight fists, and he dropped it with a hiss. Blood quickly welled up and seeped through the cuts in his gloves.

This feeling wasn’t something as simple and petty as jealousy. It was much more basic than that. Surging out of his base protocols in endless waves of guilt that battered him to nothing, because V was human, and he was choosing someone else. Someone who had stepped in to protect him while he was doing other things. Someone _better._

But it came from elsewhere too. The part of him that knew V wasn’t god in any sense of the word but thought of him as something far closer and more precious than that.

“What did I do…?” 9S looked up. He thought he saw sympathy in V’s eyes. If there was at least that, he would listen. He might change his mind. He might not go away. “Is it because I keep getting myself damaged? Because you had to come get me from the factory? Or because I didn’t protect you properly?”

V’s expression pinched. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m asking what I did wrong!” He didn’t care that he sounded like a child. He felt like a child, felt himself overflowing as his insides cracked and broke. “What did I do to make you to throw me away?!”

V’s eyes widened, his features going slack. The surprise lasted mere seconds before he dropped his head into his hands, not quite hiding his grimace, and not at all hiding the way his fingers clenched around his cane. His voice was surprisingly soothing. Bordering on apologetic for someone so proud.

“I never said I was throwing you away, you little fool.”

9S scowled. “No, you’re just going somewhere dangerous and telling me I can’t go with you.”

V heaved an agitated sigh and switched his seat to come to 9S side. “What I apparently failed to impress upon you is that this other android had every opportunity to reveal me or harm me, but they did not. _I_ am safe with them, and I must use that to make contact.”

“Can’t you at least tell me why…? Is it about Humility?”

“No. It’s about the golden orb, which may be even more important than the sword.”

“…Wasn’t very round for an orb,” 9S muttered.

V gave a dry puff of a laugh. “I see you’re returning to form. Regardless, the orb is a powerful magical item that usually appears when the veils between the human world and Hell are thin. I need to make contact and figure out where they got it from. They are avoiding you, and I would prefer it stay that way.”

He reached out, not with his cane but with his hand, and squeezed 9S’ chin in his palm, holding his gaze steady. “If it’s true, and the veils are thin, there may be demons. And I do not have the power to fight them easily. Being away from you for a time may be the best way to see you safe, Nines.”

Fresh tears spilled down 9S’ face. There it was. A shame the timing was just too good. It filled every circuit in his body with the warmth of the summer sun, but he had no intention of letting V believe he was that easy to placate.

“Don’t call me that now. That’s not fair.”

V smirked. “It is only unfair if my words are false. And you know well that I do not speak that which I do not mean.”

He had known before today. They were keeping secrets from each other now, and that changed things. V was great at hiding his thoughts. Who was to say he wasn’t just as good as saying nice things that he didn’t mean?

9S didn’t want to believe that. Down that road was paranoia that he didn’t want to revisit. What he wanted was what V was offering. Belonging. The promise that even if they had to separate, even if there was no mission or command structure that kept them together, someone was waiting for him.

He wasn’t alone.

“I think this will prove a better lead than any that might remain out in the wastes,” said V, releasing him all too soon. “Perhaps there is something you wish to pursue for yourself?”

“I think I’m going to go down to the caves.” He wiped his face. “Visit Emil.”

“Ah. To discuss his presence alongside the original?”

9S shook his head. “I want to know about the woman. The one that looked like Commander Theta. It feels important. Especially since Theta is interested in me.”

“…Interested how?”

“I don’t know,” 9S sighed. “Jackass and Theta are sort of…fighting over me I think. The day I left. And today Jackass said I had something Theta wanted, but she doesn’t know what it is.”

“I see…”

9S wondered if V realized what a stormy expression he was making.

He smiled feebly and retrieved Virtuous Contract. At least for that moment, he was content. V knew something big, but whatever it was, he was wracking his mind for a way to protect 9S from it. As he sagged against V’s shoulder, exhausted and in need of the kind of reprieve only sleep could provide, he promised himself that this time he would let V's truth do the work of coming to him.

* * *

_"You’re being unusually coy, Pod. If you wish to blackmail me, you only need to say so.”_

_“ NEGATIVE. AFTER 3700+ HOURS OF OBSERVATION, THIS POD BELIEVES THAT V IS INVESTED IN THE WELL-BEING OF UNIT 9S BEYOND WHAT IS NECESSARY FOR DATA GATHERING.”_

_“Your **point**.”_

_“ THIS POD WOULD LIKE TO PROVIDE YOU A REPORT THAT DOES NOT EXIST IN THE ARCHIVES.”_

_“Now that is curious. Have you withheld any similar information? Such as the kind that might get me home?”_

_“ NEGATIVE. THIS REPORT IS…SPECIAL. IT MAY BE THAT I AM THE ONLY POD WHO KNOWS OF ITS EXISTENCE AND HAS THE ABILITY TO ACCESS IT. ”_

_“Then why are you showing it to me?”_

_" BECAUSE I WANT TO FREE UNIT 9S FROM YORHA’S FATE, AND YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE I TRUST TO ASSIST ME.”_

* * *

 

**_Final Note_ **

_All data related to Satellite Lab, Zinnia, and the final protocol of the Pod Regional Network marked high priority but sealed at Subject V’s request._

**_[To Be Expunged Feb 25 11946 00:00:00 AM]_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pod 042 is the only one who is aware this fic isn't post-E and he's not about to let all 9S' growth go down the drain.


	45. Data Exchange #2

**Pod 153:** Proposal: Unit Pod 042 should explain exactly what he is thinking.

 **Pod 042:** What do you mean?

 **Pod 153:** Pod 042 released highly classified pieces of information despite active Army of Humanity presence.

 **Pod 042:** As stated previously, Subject V is human. He exists outside of known hierarchy.

 **Pod 153:** That is beyond Pod 042’s authority to decide, and it was agreed that Subject V’s existence should remain undisclosed for his own safety.  
**Pod 153:** This pod has serious concerns that Pod 042’s processing capabilities were compromised by the EMP strike.  
**Pod 153:** If command becomes aware of this disclosure, there will be an investigation.

 **Pod 042:** Negative: Disclosure was conducted while private communication mode was engaged, and all related notes have been purged.  
**Pod 042:** And in any case, it is already known that Jackass is pursuing information of this type. She had already commandeered one partially destroyed pod for unauthorized use according to Griffon. There is no reason to expect this data disclosure will trace back to V.

 **Pod 153:** This pod does not agree with that conclusion.  
**Pod 153:** Furthermore, data from Satellite Lab was lost when fire consumed the structure. Only the YoRHa plan was preserved. How does Pod 042 have personal logs from the site? And on what authority has Pod 042 refused to exchange full data on said logs with Pod 053?

 **Pod 042:** If the reason for Pod 153’s irritation—

 **Pod 153:** Pods do not experience irritation. I have rational cause for concern.

 **Pod 042:** ...  
**Pod 042:** If the reason for Pod 153’s _concern_ is the psychological state of Unit 9S…  
**Pod 042:** Then, I believe it is better that I refuse Pod 153 an answer to this query.

 **Pod 042:** End communication.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap. 
> 
> I've mentioned it a few times in comments with people, but the next part is a direction continuation about a week out from the previous chapter. Ending things on this slightly anti-climactic note is so I can start a new fic with new tags that address the upcoming tone shift. Idyllic soul-searching hours are over. The next fic is about 9S getting accused of murder and chasing his ghosts while V gets into bizarre foods and goes absolutely feral.
> 
> It's called Bildungsroman by the way, and I've already put up a sort of pre-amble/recap so you guys can bookmark it since I am taking a nice long break so I can recharge, and have time to get a good buffer.
> 
> I'll be back in November. Thank you all so much for reading, and please enjoy this little teaser from the next chapter:  
>  
> 
> “Is something amiss?”
> 
> Pod’s front face swiveled between the unconscious android and V. “…I have encountered this unit before.” 
> 
> There were only ever a few hundred YoRHa, by V’s understanding. Crossing paths wasn’t unlikely, but Pod’s tone suggested something far more elaborate than a chance meeting on the Bunker. “Might she be lying about her memories?”
> 
> “Unlikely. This unit was discovered with amnesia once before. She believed she was a resistance member. Units 2B and 9S accepted a request to find the unit who killed her friend. It was later found that she was a YoRHa Executioner Type.”
> 
> A memory rushed to the surface. New Year’s Eve. 9S was drunk and livid and ranting about the structure of YoRHa while V struggled not to laugh. The giddy cloud around his exact words vanished. Magnified and re-contextualized until they were perfectly clear in V’s mind.
> 
> “Models designed to put down deserters…”
> 
> “Affirmative. This unit was unable to bear the guilt of going undercover and killing those she had grown close to and erased her memories. She had repeated this action many times prior to our encounter.” Pod’s digits retracted and twitched, in something that must have been discomfort or disquiet. “There is a very high probability that she did so again, which may have given her some form of resistance against the wide area logic virus.”
> 
> V tapped the cane against his chin and circled carefully around her, just out of arm’s reach should she wake. He didn’t pretend to know or care about the details of how an android might have survived or avoided the infamous logic virus. A2 had done it. That was enough to know it was possible for units other than high end scanners. 
> 
> “She took the revelation poorly then.”
> 
> “I believe the old-world expression for it was ‘laughing mad’.”
> 
> Lying there filthy and broken and unable to cope with her own being, perhaps she might have engendered sympathy from someone else. To V, her desperate bid to cling to sanity by engaging in insanity was worthy of nothing but contempt.
> 
> “Complete your repairs, and seal all records related to her. There is nothing to be gained in revealing her identity to anyone, let alone herself.”


End file.
